linux/mm/Kconfig

179 lines
5.3 KiB

[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] sparsemem memory model Sparsemem abstracts the use of discontiguous mem_maps[]. This kind of mem_map[] is needed by discontiguous memory machines (like in the old CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM case) as well as memory hotplug systems. Sparsemem replaces DISCONTIGMEM when enabled, and it is hoped that it can eventually become a complete replacement. A significant advantage over DISCONTIGMEM is that it's completely separated from CONFIG_NUMA. When producing this patch, it became apparent in that NUMA and DISCONTIG are often confused. Another advantage is that sparse doesn't require each NUMA node's ranges to be contiguous. It can handle overlapping ranges between nodes with no problems, where DISCONTIGMEM currently throws away that memory. Sparsemem uses an array to provide different pfn_to_page() translations for each SECTION_SIZE area of physical memory. This is what allows the mem_map[] to be chopped up. In order to do quick pfn_to_page() operations, the section number of the page is encoded in page->flags. Part of the sparsemem infrastructure enables sharing of these bits more dynamically (at compile-time) between the page_zone() and sparsemem operations. However, on 32-bit architectures, the number of bits is quite limited, and may require growing the size of the page->flags type in certain conditions. Several things might force this to occur: a decrease in the SECTION_SIZE (if you want to hotplug smaller areas of memory), an increase in the physical address space, or an increase in the number of used page->flags. One thing to note is that, once sparsemem is present, the NUMA node information no longer needs to be stored in the page->flags. It might provide speed increases on certain platforms and will be stored there if there is room. But, if out of room, an alternate (theoretically slower) mechanism is used. This patch introduces CONFIG_FLATMEM. It is used in almost all cases where there used to be an #ifndef DISCONTIG, because SPARSEMEM and DISCONTIGMEM often have to compile out the same areas of code. Signed-off-by: Andy Whitcroft <apw@shadowen.org> Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Martin Bligh <mbligh@aracnet.com> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Yasunori Goto <y-goto@jp.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Bob Picco <bob.picco@hp.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-06-23 00:07:54 -07:00
[PATCH] mm: split page table lock Christoph Lameter demonstrated very poor scalability on the SGI 512-way, with a many-threaded application which concurrently initializes different parts of a large anonymous area. This patch corrects that, by using a separate spinlock per page table page, to guard the page table entries in that page, instead of using the mm's single page_table_lock. (But even then, page_table_lock is still used to guard page table allocation, and anon_vma allocation.) In this implementation, the spinlock is tucked inside the struct page of the page table page: with a BUILD_BUG_ON in case it overflows - which it would in the case of 32-bit PA-RISC with spinlock debugging enabled. Splitting the lock is not quite for free: another cacheline access. Ideally, I suppose we would use split ptlock only for multi-threaded processes on multi-cpu machines; but deciding that dynamically would have its own costs. So for now enable it by config, at some number of cpus - since the Kconfig language doesn't support inequalities, let preprocessor compare that with NR_CPUS. But I don't think it's worth being user-configurable: for good testing of both split and unsplit configs, split now at 4 cpus, and perhaps change that to 8 later. There is a benefit even for singly threaded processes: kswapd can be attacking one part of the mm while another part is busy faulting. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-10-29 18:16:40 -07:00
[PATCH] mm: split page table lock Christoph Lameter demonstrated very poor scalability on the SGI 512-way, with a many-threaded application which concurrently initializes different parts of a large anonymous area. This patch corrects that, by using a separate spinlock per page table page, to guard the page table entries in that page, instead of using the mm's single page_table_lock. (But even then, page_table_lock is still used to guard page table allocation, and anon_vma allocation.) In this implementation, the spinlock is tucked inside the struct page of the page table page: with a BUILD_BUG_ON in case it overflows - which it would in the case of 32-bit PA-RISC with spinlock debugging enabled. Splitting the lock is not quite for free: another cacheline access. Ideally, I suppose we would use split ptlock only for multi-threaded processes on multi-cpu machines; but deciding that dynamically would have its own costs. So for now enable it by config, at some number of cpus - since the Kconfig language doesn't support inequalities, let preprocessor compare that with NR_CPUS. But I don't think it's worth being user-configurable: for good testing of both split and unsplit configs, split now at 4 cpus, and perhaps change that to 8 later. There is a benefit even for singly threaded processes: kswapd can be attacking one part of the mm while another part is busy faulting. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-10-29 18:16:40 -07:00
[PATCH] mm: split page table lock Christoph Lameter demonstrated very poor scalability on the SGI 512-way, with a many-threaded application which concurrently initializes different parts of a large anonymous area. This patch corrects that, by using a separate spinlock per page table page, to guard the page table entries in that page, instead of using the mm's single page_table_lock. (But even then, page_table_lock is still used to guard page table allocation, and anon_vma allocation.) In this implementation, the spinlock is tucked inside the struct page of the page table page: with a BUILD_BUG_ON in case it overflows - which it would in the case of 32-bit PA-RISC with spinlock debugging enabled. Splitting the lock is not quite for free: another cacheline access. Ideally, I suppose we would use split ptlock only for multi-threaded processes on multi-cpu machines; but deciding that dynamically would have its own costs. So for now enable it by config, at some number of cpus - since the Kconfig language doesn't support inequalities, let preprocessor compare that with NR_CPUS. But I don't think it's worth being user-configurable: for good testing of both split and unsplit configs, split now at 4 cpus, and perhaps change that to 8 later. There is a benefit even for singly threaded processes: kswapd can be attacking one part of the mm while another part is busy faulting. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-10-29 18:16:40 -07:00
[PATCH] mm: split page table lock Christoph Lameter demonstrated very poor scalability on the SGI 512-way, with a many-threaded application which concurrently initializes different parts of a large anonymous area. This patch corrects that, by using a separate spinlock per page table page, to guard the page table entries in that page, instead of using the mm's single page_table_lock. (But even then, page_table_lock is still used to guard page table allocation, and anon_vma allocation.) In this implementation, the spinlock is tucked inside the struct page of the page table page: with a BUILD_BUG_ON in case it overflows - which it would in the case of 32-bit PA-RISC with spinlock debugging enabled. Splitting the lock is not quite for free: another cacheline access. Ideally, I suppose we would use split ptlock only for multi-threaded processes on multi-cpu machines; but deciding that dynamically would have its own costs. So for now enable it by config, at some number of cpus - since the Kconfig language doesn't support inequalities, let preprocessor compare that with NR_CPUS. But I don't think it's worth being user-configurable: for good testing of both split and unsplit configs, split now at 4 cpus, and perhaps change that to 8 later. There is a benefit even for singly threaded processes: kswapd can be attacking one part of the mm while another part is busy faulting. Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-10-29 18:16:40 -07:00
Quicklists for page table pages On x86_64 this cuts allocation overhead for page table pages down to a fraction (kernel compile / editing load. TSC based measurement of times spend in each function): no quicklist pte_alloc 1569048 4.3s(401ns/2.7us/179.7us) pmd_alloc 780988 2.1s(337ns/2.7us/86.1us) pud_alloc 780072 2.2s(424ns/2.8us/300.6us) pgd_alloc 260022 1s(920ns/4us/263.1us) quicklist: pte_alloc 452436 573.4ms(8ns/1.3us/121.1us) pmd_alloc 196204 174.5ms(7ns/889ns/46.1us) pud_alloc 195688 172.4ms(7ns/881ns/151.3us) pgd_alloc 65228 9.8ms(8ns/150ns/6.1us) pgd allocations are the most complex and there we see the most dramatic improvement (may be we can cut down the amount of pgds cached somewhat?). But even the pte allocations still see a doubling of performance. 1. Proven code from the IA64 arch. The method used here has been fine tuned for years and is NUMA aware. It is based on the knowledge that accesses to page table pages are sparse in nature. Taking a page off the freelists instead of allocating a zeroed pages allows a reduction of number of cachelines touched in addition to getting rid of the slab overhead. So performance improves. This is particularly useful if pgds contain standard mappings. We can save on the teardown and setup of such a page if we have some on the quicklists. This includes avoiding lists operations that are otherwise necessary on alloc and free to track pgds. 2. Light weight alternative to use slab to manage page size pages Slab overhead is significant and even page allocator use is pretty heavy weight. The use of a per cpu quicklist means that we touch only two cachelines for an allocation. There is no need to access the page_struct (unless arch code needs to fiddle around with it). So the fast past just means bringing in one cacheline at the beginning of the page. That same cacheline may then be used to store the page table entry. Or a second cacheline may be used if the page table entry is not in the first cacheline of the page. The current code will zero the page which means touching 32 cachelines (assuming 128 byte). We get down from 32 to 2 cachelines in the fast path. 3. x86_64 gets lightweight page table page management. This will allow x86_64 arch code to faster repopulate pgds and other page table entries. The list operations for pgds are reduced in the same way as for i386 to the point where a pgd is allocated from the page allocator and when it is freed back to the page allocator. A pgd can pass through the quicklists without having to be reinitialized. 64 Consolidation of code from multiple arches So far arches have their own implementation of quicklist management. This patch moves that feature into the core allowing an easier maintenance and consistent management of quicklists. Page table pages have the characteristics that they are typically zero or in a known state when they are freed. This is usually the exactly same state as needed after allocation. So it makes sense to build a list of freed page table pages and then consume the pages already in use first. Those pages have already been initialized correctly (thus no need to zero them) and are likely already cached in such a way that the MMU can use them most effectively. Page table pages are used in a sparse way so zeroing them on allocation is not too useful. Such an implementation already exits for ia64. Howver, that implementation did not support constructors and destructors as needed by i386 / x86_64. It also only supported a single quicklist. The implementation here has constructor and destructor support as well as the ability for an arch to specify how many quicklists are needed. Quicklists are defined by an arch defining CONFIG_QUICKLIST. If more than one quicklist is necessary then we can define NR_QUICK for additional lists. F.e. i386 needs two and thus has config NR_QUICK int default 2 If an arch has requested quicklist support then pages can be allocated from the quicklist (or from the page allocator if the quicklist is empty) via: quicklist_alloc(<quicklist-nr>, <gfpflags>, <constructor>) Page table pages can be freed using: quicklist_free(<quicklist-nr>, <destructor>, <page>) Pages must have a definite state after allocation and before they are freed. If no constructor is specified then pages will be zeroed on allocation and must be zeroed before they are freed. If a constructor is used then the constructor will establish a definite page state. F.e. the i386 and x86_64 pgd constructors establish certain mappings. Constructors and destructors can also be used to track the pages. i386 and x86_64 use a list of pgds in order to be able to dynamically update standard mappings. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com> Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:50 -07:00
Quicklists for page table pages On x86_64 this cuts allocation overhead for page table pages down to a fraction (kernel compile / editing load. TSC based measurement of times spend in each function): no quicklist pte_alloc 1569048 4.3s(401ns/2.7us/179.7us) pmd_alloc 780988 2.1s(337ns/2.7us/86.1us) pud_alloc 780072 2.2s(424ns/2.8us/300.6us) pgd_alloc 260022 1s(920ns/4us/263.1us) quicklist: pte_alloc 452436 573.4ms(8ns/1.3us/121.1us) pmd_alloc 196204 174.5ms(7ns/889ns/46.1us) pud_alloc 195688 172.4ms(7ns/881ns/151.3us) pgd_alloc 65228 9.8ms(8ns/150ns/6.1us) pgd allocations are the most complex and there we see the most dramatic improvement (may be we can cut down the amount of pgds cached somewhat?). But even the pte allocations still see a doubling of performance. 1. Proven code from the IA64 arch. The method used here has been fine tuned for years and is NUMA aware. It is based on the knowledge that accesses to page table pages are sparse in nature. Taking a page off the freelists instead of allocating a zeroed pages allows a reduction of number of cachelines touched in addition to getting rid of the slab overhead. So performance improves. This is particularly useful if pgds contain standard mappings. We can save on the teardown and setup of such a page if we have some on the quicklists. This includes avoiding lists operations that are otherwise necessary on alloc and free to track pgds. 2. Light weight alternative to use slab to manage page size pages Slab overhead is significant and even page allocator use is pretty heavy weight. The use of a per cpu quicklist means that we touch only two cachelines for an allocation. There is no need to access the page_struct (unless arch code needs to fiddle around with it). So the fast past just means bringing in one cacheline at the beginning of the page. That same cacheline may then be used to store the page table entry. Or a second cacheline may be used if the page table entry is not in the first cacheline of the page. The current code will zero the page which means touching 32 cachelines (assuming 128 byte). We get down from 32 to 2 cachelines in the fast path. 3. x86_64 gets lightweight page table page management. This will allow x86_64 arch code to faster repopulate pgds and other page table entries. The list operations for pgds are reduced in the same way as for i386 to the point where a pgd is allocated from the page allocator and when it is freed back to the page allocator. A pgd can pass through the quicklists without having to be reinitialized. 64 Consolidation of code from multiple arches So far arches have their own implementation of quicklist management. This patch moves that feature into the core allowing an easier maintenance and consistent management of quicklists. Page table pages have the characteristics that they are typically zero or in a known state when they are freed. This is usually the exactly same state as needed after allocation. So it makes sense to build a list of freed page table pages and then consume the pages already in use first. Those pages have already been initialized correctly (thus no need to zero them) and are likely already cached in such a way that the MMU can use them most effectively. Page table pages are used in a sparse way so zeroing them on allocation is not too useful. Such an implementation already exits for ia64. Howver, that implementation did not support constructors and destructors as needed by i386 / x86_64. It also only supported a single quicklist. The implementation here has constructor and destructor support as well as the ability for an arch to specify how many quicklists are needed. Quicklists are defined by an arch defining CONFIG_QUICKLIST. If more than one quicklist is necessary then we can define NR_QUICK for additional lists. F.e. i386 needs two and thus has config NR_QUICK int default 2 If an arch has requested quicklist support then pages can be allocated from the quicklist (or from the page allocator if the quicklist is empty) via: quicklist_alloc(<quicklist-nr>, <gfpflags>, <constructor>) Page table pages can be freed using: quicklist_free(<quicklist-nr>, <destructor>, <page>) Pages must have a definite state after allocation and before they are freed. If no constructor is specified then pages will be zeroed on allocation and must be zeroed before they are freed. If a constructor is used then the constructor will establish a definite page state. F.e. the i386 and x86_64 pgd constructors establish certain mappings. Constructors and destructors can also be used to track the pages. i386 and x86_64 use a list of pgds in order to be able to dynamically update standard mappings. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de> Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com> Cc: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:50 -07:00