On Wed 05-12-18 16:58:02, Linus Torvalds wrote:
[...]
> I realize that we probably do want to just have explicit policies that
> do not exist right now, but what are (a) sane defaults, and (b) sane
> policies?
I would focus on the current default first (which is defrag=madvise).
This means that we only try the cheapest possible THP without
MADV_HUGEPAGE. If there is none we simply fallback. We do restrict to
the local node. I guess there is a general agreement that this is a sane
default.
MADV_HUGEPAGE changes the picture because the caller expressed a need
for THP and is willing to go extra mile to get it. That involves
allocation latency and as of now also a potential remote access. We do
not have complete agreement on the later but the prevailing argument is
that any strong NUMA locality is just reinventing node-reclaim story
again or makes THP success rate down the toilet (to quote Mel). I agree
that we do not want to fallback to a remote node overeagerly. I believe
that something like the below would be sensible
1) THP on a local node with compaction not giving up too early
2) THP on a remote node in NOWAIT mode - so no direct
compaction/reclaim (trigger kswapd/kcompactd only for
defrag=defer+madvise)
3) fallback to the base page allocation
This would allow both full memory utilization and try to be as local as
possible. Whoever strongly prefers NUMA locality should be using
MPOL_NODE_RECLAIM (or similar) and that would skip 2 and make 1) and 2)
use more aggressive compaction and reclaim.
This will also fit into our existing NUMA api. MPOL_NODE_RECLAIM
wouldn't be restricted to THP obviously. It would act on base pages as
well and it would basically use the same implementation as we have for
the global node_reclaim and make it usable again.
Does this sound at least remotely sane?
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
