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Date:   Tue, 29 May 2018 10:48:16 +0200
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
To:     Aaron Lu <aaron.lu@intel.com>
Cc:     Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
        kernel test robot <xiaolong.ye@intel.com>, lkp@01.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [LKP] [lkp-robot] [mm] e27be240df: will-it-scale.per_process_ops
 -27.2% regression
Message-ID: <20180529084816.GS27180@dhcp22.suse.cz>
References: <20180508053451.GD30203@yexl-desktop>
 <20180508172640.GB24175@cmpxchg.org>
 <20180528085201.GA2918@intel.com>
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On Mon 28-05-18 16:52:01, Aaron Lu wrote:
> On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 01:26:40PM -0400, Johannes Weiner wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 01:34:51PM +0800, kernel test robot wrote:
> > > FYI, we noticed a -27.2% regression of will-it-scale.per_process_ops due to commit:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > commit: e27be240df53f1a20c659168e722b5d9f16cc7f4 ("mm: memcg: make sure memory.events is uptodate when waking pollers")
> > > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git master
> > > 
> > > in testcase: will-it-scale
> > > on test machine: 72 threads Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2699 v3 @ 2.30GHz with 128G memory
> > > with following parameters:
> > > 
> > > 	nr_task: 100%
> > > 	mode: process
> > > 	test: page_fault3
> > > 	cpufreq_governor: performance
> > > 
> > > test-description: Will It Scale takes a testcase and runs it from 1 through to n parallel copies to see if the testcase will scale. It builds both a process and threads based test in order to see any differences between the two.
> > > test-url: https://github.com/antonblanchard/will-it-scale
> > 
> > This is surprising. Do you run these tests in a memory cgroup with a
> > limit set? Can you dump that cgroup's memory.events after the run?
> 
> "Some background in case it's forgotten: we do not set any memory control
> group specifically and the test machine is using ramfs as its root.
> The machine has plenty memory, no swap is setup. All pages belong to
> root_mem_cgroup"
> 
> Turned out the performance change is due to 'struct mem_cgroup' layout
> change, i.e. if I do:
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/memcontrol.h b/include/linux/memcontrol.h
> index d99b71bc2c66..c767db1da0bb 100644
> --- a/include/linux/memcontrol.h
> +++ b/include/linux/memcontrol.h
> @@ -205,7 +205,6 @@ struct mem_cgroup {
>  	int		oom_kill_disable;
>  
>  	/* memory.events */
> -	atomic_long_t memory_events[MEMCG_NR_MEMORY_EVENTS];
>  	struct cgroup_file events_file;
>  
>  	/* protect arrays of thresholds */
> @@ -238,6 +237,7 @@ struct mem_cgroup {
>  	struct mem_cgroup_stat_cpu __percpu *stat_cpu;
>  	atomic_long_t		stat[MEMCG_NR_STAT];
>  	atomic_long_t		events[NR_VM_EVENT_ITEMS];
> +	atomic_long_t memory_events[MEMCG_NR_MEMORY_EVENTS];
>  
>  	unsigned long		socket_pressure;

Well, I do not mind moving memory_events down to other stats/events. I
suspect Johannes' chosen the current location to be close to
events_file.

> The performance will restore.
> 
> Move information:
> With this patch, perf profile+annotate showed increased cycles spent on
> accessing root_mem_cgroup->stat_cpu in count_memcg_event_mm()(called by
> handle_mm_fault()):
> 
>        │             x = count + __this_cpu_read(memcg->stat_cpu->events[idx]);
>  92.31 │       mov    0x308(%rcx),%rax
>   0.58 │       mov    %gs:0x1b0(%rax),%rdx
>   0.09 │       add    $0x1,%rdx
> 
> And in __mod_memcg_state() called by page_add_file_rmap():
> 
>        │             x = val + __this_cpu_read(memcg->stat_cpu->count[idx]);
>  70.89 │       mov    0x308(%rdi),%rdx
>   0.43 │       mov    %gs:0x68(%rdx),%rax
>   0.08 │       add    %rbx,%rax
>        │             if (unlikely(abs(x) > MEMCG_CHARGE_BATCH)) {
> 
> My first reaction is, with the patch changing the sturcture layout, the
> stat_cpu field might end up in a cacheline that is constantly being
> written to. With the help of pahole, I got:
> 1 after this patch(bad)
>        
>         /* --- cacheline 12 boundary (768 bytes) --- */
>         long unsigned int          move_lock_flags;      /*   768     8 */
>         struct mem_cgroup_stat_cpu * stat_cpu;           /*   776     8 */
>         atomic_long_t              stat[34];             /*   784     0 */
> 
> stat[0] - stat[5] falls in this cacheline.
> 
> 2 before this patch(good)
>         /* --- cacheline 11 boundary (704 bytes) was 8 bytes ago --- */
>         long unsigned int          move_charge_at_immigrate; /*   712     8 */
>         atomic_t                   moving_account;       /*   720     0 */
> 
>         /* XXX 4 bytes hole, try to pack */
> 
>         spinlock_t                 move_lock;            /*   724     0 */
> 
>         /* XXX 4 bytes hole, try to pack */
> 
>         struct task_struct *       move_lock_task;       /*   728     8 */
>         long unsigned int          move_lock_flags;      /*   736     8 */
>         struct mem_cgroup_stat_cpu * stat_cpu;           /*   744     8 */
>         atomic_long_t              stat[34];             /*   752     0 */
> 
> stat[0] - stat[1] falls in this cacheline.
> 
> We now have more stat[]s fall in the cacheline, but then I realized
> stats[0] - stat[12] are never written to for a memory control group, the
> first written field is 13(NR_FILE_MAPPED).

This is a bit scary though. Seeing 27% regression just because of this
is really unexpected and fragile wrt. future changes.
 
> So I think my first reaction is wrong.
> 
> Looking at the good layout, there is a field moving_account that will be
> accessed during the test in lock_page_memcg(), and that access is always
> read only since there is no page changing memcg. So the good performance
> might be due to having the two fields in the cache line. I moved the
> moving_account field to the same cacheline as stat_cpu for the bad case,
> the performance restored a lot but still not as good as base.
> 
> I'm not sure where to go next step and would like to seek some
> suggestion. Based on my analysis, it appears the good performance for
> base is entirely by accident(having moving_account and stat_cpu in the
> same cacheline), we never ensure that. In the meantime, it might not be
> a good idea to ensure that since stat_cpu should be an always_read field
> while moving_account will be modified when needed.
> 
> Or any idea what might be the cause? Thanks.

Can you actually prepare a patch with all these numbers and a big fat
comment in the structure to keep the most hot counters close to
moving_account. Maybe we want to re-organize this some more and pull
move_lock* out of the sensitive cache line because they are a slow path
stuff. We would have more stasts in the same cache line then. What do
you think?
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs