[PATCH] mm/memcontrol: avoid false sharing between vmstats and events

[PATCH] mm/memcontrol: avoid false sharing between vmstats and events

[Usama Arif]

Moving v1 userspace eventfd handling into memcontrol-v1.c shrank
struct vmpressure from 112 to 24 bytes when CONFIG_MEMCG_V1 is disabled.
This moved memory_events_local[MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL] and the hot
vmstats_percpu pointer onto the same cacheline.

The stress-ng mremap stressor exercises MADV_PAGEOUT with swap
disabled, generating about 20 million MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL updates per
60-second run on a 176-CPU test system.  Those writes bounce the line
while memcg statistics paths load vmstats_percpu.

Move cgwb_list into the existing alignment gap and cacheline-align
vmstats_percpu.  This separates the pointer from the event counters
without increasing the size of struct mem_cgroup in the tested
configuration.

The blamed commit reduced median mremap throughput by 4.38% on the
test system with one socket. The patched kernel brings the performance
to within 0.5% of the parent which is within the observed boot-to-boot
spread (up to 1.2%).

Fixes: ea928e9e18da ("mm/vmpressure: move v1 userspace eventfd code into memcontrol-v1.c")
Reported-by: kernel test robot <yi1.lai@intel.com>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/oe-lkp/202608131743.c6a7dda4-lkp@intel.com
Signed-off-by: Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>
Acked-by: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
---
 include/linux/memcontrol.h | 9 +++++++--
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/memcontrol.h b/include/linux/memcontrol.h
index e78bc98ab229b..215e2e87f42b2 100644
--- a/include/linux/memcontrol.h
+++ b/include/linux/memcontrol.h
@@ -268,10 +268,15 @@ struct mem_cgroup {
 #endif
 	int kmemcg_id;
 
-	struct memcg_vmstats_percpu __percpu *vmstats_percpu;
-
 #ifdef CONFIG_CGROUP_WRITEBACK
 	struct list_head cgwb_list;
+#endif
+
+	/* Keep the hot per-CPU stats pointer away from memory event counters. */
+	struct memcg_vmstats_percpu __percpu *vmstats_percpu
+		____cacheline_aligned_in_smp;
+
+#ifdef CONFIG_CGROUP_WRITEBACK
 	struct wb_domain cgwb_domain;
 	struct memcg_cgwb_frn cgwb_frn[MEMCG_CGWB_FRN_CNT];
 #endif
-- 
2.53.0-Meta

Re: [PATCH] mm/memcontrol: avoid false sharing between vmstats and events

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:38:35 -0700 Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev> wrote:

> Moving v1 userspace eventfd handling into memcontrol-v1.c shrank
> struct vmpressure from 112 to 24 bytes when CONFIG_MEMCG_V1 is disabled.
> This moved memory_events_local[MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL] and the hot
> vmstats_percpu pointer onto the same cacheline.
> 
> The stress-ng mremap stressor exercises MADV_PAGEOUT with swap
> disabled, generating about 20 million MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL updates per
> 60-second run on a 176-CPU test system.  Those writes bounce the line
> while memcg statistics paths load vmstats_percpu.
> 
> Move cgwb_list into the existing alignment gap and cacheline-align
> vmstats_percpu.  This separates the pointer from the event counters
> without increasing the size of struct mem_cgroup in the tested
> configuration.
> 
> The blamed commit reduced median mremap throughput by 4.38% on the
> test system with one socket. The patched kernel brings the performance
> to within 0.5% of the parent which is within the observed boot-to-boot
> spread (up to 1.2%).

Cool, thanks.

> Fixes: ea928e9e18da ("mm/vmpressure: move v1 userspace eventfd code into memcontrol-v1.c")

That's in mm-stable so I'll squeeze this fix into next week's 7.3-rc1
merge pile.

Re: [PATCH] mm/memcontrol: avoid false sharing between vmstats and events

[Shakeel Butt]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2026 at 10:43:40AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Aug 2026 03:38:35 -0700 Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev> wrote:
> 
> > Moving v1 userspace eventfd handling into memcontrol-v1.c shrank
> > struct vmpressure from 112 to 24 bytes when CONFIG_MEMCG_V1 is disabled.
> > This moved memory_events_local[MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL] and the hot
> > vmstats_percpu pointer onto the same cacheline.
> > 
> > The stress-ng mremap stressor exercises MADV_PAGEOUT with swap
> > disabled, generating about 20 million MEMCG_SWAP_FAIL updates per
> > 60-second run on a 176-CPU test system.  Those writes bounce the line
> > while memcg statistics paths load vmstats_percpu.
> > 
> > Move cgwb_list into the existing alignment gap and cacheline-align
> > vmstats_percpu.  This separates the pointer from the event counters
> > without increasing the size of struct mem_cgroup in the tested
> > configuration.
> > 
> > The blamed commit reduced median mremap throughput by 4.38% on the
> > test system with one socket. The patched kernel brings the performance
> > to within 0.5% of the parent which is within the observed boot-to-boot
> > spread (up to 1.2%).
> 
> Cool, thanks.
> 
> > Fixes: ea928e9e18da ("mm/vmpressure: move v1 userspace eventfd code into memcontrol-v1.c")
> 
> That's in mm-stable so I'll squeeze this fix into next week's 7.3-rc1
> merge pile.

Thanks Andrew. We should also add the following tag due to http://lore.kernel.org/aoAABX59IzUXz/Rv@ly-workstation

Tested-by: kernel test robot <yi1.lai@intel.com>
> 
>