mm: hugetlb_vmemmap: add hugetlb_optimize_vmemmap sysctl

We must add hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on (or "off") to the boot cmdline and
reboot the server to enable or disable the feature of optimizing vmemmap
pages associated with HugeTLB pages.  However, rebooting usually takes a
long time.  So add a sysctl to enable or disable the feature at runtime
without rebooting.  Why we need this?  There are 3 use cases.

1) The feature of minimizing overhead of struct page associated with
   each HugeTLB is disabled by default without passing
   "hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on" to the boot cmdline.  When we (ByteDance)
   deliver the servers to the users who want to enable this feature, they
   have to configure the grub (change boot cmdline) and reboot the
   servers, whereas rebooting usually takes a long time (we have thousands
   of servers).  It's a very bad experience for the users.  So we need a
   approach to enable this feature after rebooting.  This is a use case in
   our practical environment.

2) Some use cases are that HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on the fly'
   instead of being pulled from the HugeTLB pool, those workloads would be
   affected with this feature enabled.  Those workloads could be
   identified by the characteristics of they never explicitly allocating
   huge pages with 'nr_hugepages' but only set 'nr_overcommit_hugepages'
   and then let the pages be allocated from the buddy allocator at fault
   time.  We can confirm it is a real use case from the commit
   099730d674.  For those workloads, the page fault time could be ~2x
   slower than before.  We suspect those users want to disable this
   feature if the system has enabled this before and they don't think the
   memory savings benefit is enough to make up for the performance drop.

3) If the workload which wants vmemmap pages to be optimized and the
   workload which wants to set 'nr_overcommit_hugepages' and does not want
   the extera overhead at fault time when the overcommitted pages be
   allocated from the buddy allocator are deployed in the same server. 
   The user could enable this feature and set 'nr_hugepages' and
   'nr_overcommit_hugepages', then disable the feature.  In this case, the
   overcommited HugeTLB pages will not encounter the extra overhead at
   fault time.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220512041142.39501-5-songmuchun@bytedance.com
Signed-off-by: Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>
Reviewed-by: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Iurii Zaikin <yzaikin@google.com>
Cc: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@suse.de>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Cc: Xiongchun Duan <duanxiongchun@bytedance.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
This commit is contained in:
Muchun Song
2022-05-13 16:48:56 -07:00
committed by Andrew Morton
parent 9c54c522bb
commit 78f39084b4
4 changed files with 133 additions and 15 deletions

View File

@@ -562,6 +562,45 @@ Change the minimum size of the hugepage pool.
See Documentation/admin-guide/mm/hugetlbpage.rst
hugetlb_optimize_vmemmap
========================
This knob is not available when memory_hotplug.memmap_on_memory (kernel parameter)
is configured or the size of 'struct page' (a structure defined in
include/linux/mm_types.h) is not power of two (an unusual system config could
result in this).
Enable (set to 1) or disable (set to 0) the feature of optimizing vmemmap pages
associated with each HugeTLB page.
Once enabled, the vmemmap pages of subsequent allocation of HugeTLB pages from
buddy allocator will be optimized (7 pages per 2MB HugeTLB page and 4095 pages
per 1GB HugeTLB page), whereas already allocated HugeTLB pages will not be
optimized. When those optimized HugeTLB pages are freed from the HugeTLB pool
to the buddy allocator, the vmemmap pages representing that range needs to be
remapped again and the vmemmap pages discarded earlier need to be rellocated
again. If your use case is that HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on the fly' (e.g.
never explicitly allocating HugeTLB pages with 'nr_hugepages' but only set
'nr_overcommit_hugepages', those overcommitted HugeTLB pages are allocated 'on
the fly') instead of being pulled from the HugeTLB pool, you should weigh the
benefits of memory savings against the more overhead (~2x slower than before)
of allocation or freeing HugeTLB pages between the HugeTLB pool and the buddy
allocator. Another behavior to note is that if the system is under heavy memory
pressure, it could prevent the user from freeing HugeTLB pages from the HugeTLB
pool to the buddy allocator since the allocation of vmemmap pages could be
failed, you have to retry later if your system encounter this situation.
Once disabled, the vmemmap pages of subsequent allocation of HugeTLB pages from
buddy allocator will not be optimized meaning the extra overhead at allocation
time from buddy allocator disappears, whereas already optimized HugeTLB pages
will not be affected. If you want to make sure there are no optimized HugeTLB
pages, you can set "nr_hugepages" to 0 first and then disable this. Note that
writing 0 to nr_hugepages will make any "in use" HugeTLB pages become surplus
pages. So, those surplus pages are still optimized until they are no longer
in use. You would need to wait for those surplus pages to be released before
there are no optimized pages in the system.
nr_hugepages_mempolicy
======================