Vlastimil Babka
7a8f58f391
Since commit 3bc48f96cf ("mm, page_alloc: split smallest stolen page
in fallback") we pick the smallest (but sufficient) page of all that
have been stolen from a pageblock of different migratetype. However,
there are cases when we decide not to steal the whole pageblock.
Practically in the current implementation it means that we are trying to
fallback for a MIGRATE_MOVABLE allocation of order X, go through the
freelists from MAX_ORDER-1 down to X, and find free page of order Y. If
Y is less than pageblock_order / 2, we decide not to steal all pages
from the pageblock. When Y > X, it means we are potentially splitting a
larger page than we need, as there might be other pages of order Z,
where X <= Z < Y. Since Y is already too small to steal whole
pageblock, picking smallest available Z will result in the same decision
and we avoid splitting a higher-order page in a MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE or
MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE pageblock.
This patch therefore changes the fallback algorithm so that in the
situation described above, we switch the fallback search strategy to go
from order X upwards to find the smallest suitable fallback. In theory
there shouldn't be a downside of this change wrt fragmentation.
This has been tested with mmtests' stress-highalloc performing
GFP_KERNEL order-4 allocations, here is the relevant extfrag tracepoint
statistics:
4.12.0-rc2 4.12.0-rc2
1-kernel4 2-kernel4
Page alloc extfrag event 25640976 69680977
Extfrag fragmenting 25621086 69661364
Extfrag fragmenting for unmovable 74409 73204
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with movable 69003 67684
Extfrag fragmenting unmovable placed with reclaim. 5406 5520
Extfrag fragmenting for reclaimable 6398 8467
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with movable 869 884
Extfrag fragmenting reclaimable placed with unmov. 5529 7583
Extfrag fragmenting for movable 25540279 69579693
Since we force movable allocations to steal the smallest available page
(which we then practially always split), we steal less per fallback, so
the number of fallbacks increases and steals potentially happen from
different pageblocks. This is however not an issue for movable pages
that can be compacted.
Importantly, the "unmovable placed with movable" statistics is lower,
which is the result of less fragmentation in the unmovable pageblocks.
The effect on reclaimable allocation is a bit unclear.
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170529093947.22618-1-vbabka@suse.cz
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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