Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 209.132.180.67 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.132.180.67;
Date:   Wed, 5 Dec 2018 12:43:53 +0100
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
To:     Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc:     David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>, ying.huang@intel.com,
        s.priebe@profihost.ag,
        Linux List Kernel Mailing <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        alex.williamson@redhat.com, lkp@01.org, kirill@shutemov.name,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        zi.yan@cs.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: [LKP] [mm] ac5b2c1891: vm-scalability.throughput -61.3%
 regression
Message-ID: <20181205114353.GH1286@dhcp22.suse.cz>
References: <20181203185954.GM31738@dhcp22.suse.cz>
 <CAHk-=wiNKLH2Pbnr9z2SvmDhf7XT==U6NPRkQNX13Sg-FRk0Yw@mail.gmail.com>
 <20181203201214.GB3540@redhat.com>
 <CAHk-=wg=6uxAJMbvGJC-5CSikC8OdqsjE1vw+DsCMj=2SNSnZg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAHk-=whDg5+e2-eXYo-jwC1spt2r7JjLQSaLm4OyfGMQHLTrdw@mail.gmail.com>
 <64a4aec6-3275-a716-8345-f021f6186d9b@suse.cz>
 <20181204104558.GV23260@techsingularity.net>
 <alpine.DEB.2.21.1812041609160.213718@chino.kir.corp.google.com>
 <20181205090856.GY1286@dhcp22.suse.cz>
 <20181205104343.GZ23260@techsingularity.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <20181205104343.GZ23260@techsingularity.net>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Precedence: bulk

On Wed 05-12-18 10:43:43, Mel Gorman wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 05, 2018 at 10:08:56AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Tue 04-12-18 16:47:23, David Rientjes wrote:
> > > On Tue, 4 Dec 2018, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > > 
> > > > What should also be kept in mind is that we should avoid conflating
> > > > locality preferences with THP preferences which is separate from THP
> > > > allocation latencies. The whole __GFP_THISNODE approach is pushing too
> > > > hard on locality versus huge pages when MADV_HUGEPAGE or always-defrag
> > > > are used which is very unfortunate given that MADV_HUGEPAGE in itself says
> > > > nothing about locality -- that is the business of other madvise flags or
> > > > a specific policy.
> > > 
> > > We currently lack those other madvise modes or mempolicies: mbind() is not 
> > > a viable alternative because we do not want to oom kill when local memory 
> > > is depleted, we want to fallback to remote memory.
> > 
> > Yes, there was a clear agreement that there is no suitable mempolicy
> > right now and there were proposals to introduce MPOL_NODE_RECLAIM to
> > introduce that behavior. This would be an improvement regardless of THP
> > because global node-reclaim policy was simply a disaster we had to turn
> > off by default and the global semantic was a reason people just gave up
> > using it completely.
> > 
> 
> The alternative is to define a clear semantic for THP allocation
> requests that are considered "light" regardless of whether that needs a
> GFP flag or not. A sensible default might be
> 
> o Allocate THP local if the amount of work is light or non-existant.
> o Allocate THP remote if one is freely available with no additional work
>   (maybe kick remote kcompactd)
> o Allocate base page local if the amount of work is light or non-existant
> o Allocate base page remote if the amount of work is light or non-existant
> o Do heavy work in zonelist order until a base page is allocated somewhere

I am not sure about the ordering without a deeper consideration but I
thin THP should reflect the approach we have for base bages.

> It's not something could be clearly expressed with either NORETRY or
> THISNODE but longer-term might be saner than chopping and changing on
> which flags are more important and which workload is most relevant. That
> runs the risk of a revert-loop where each person targetting one workload
> reverts one patch to insert another until someone throws up their hands
> in frustration and just carries patches out-of-tree long-term.

Fully agreed!

> I'm not going to prototype something along these lines for now as
> fundamentally a better compaction could cut out part of the root cause
> of pain.

Yes there is some ground work to be done first.

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs