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Subject: Re: [LKP] Re: [mm/memcg] bd0b230fe1: will-it-scale.per_process_ops
 -22.7% regression
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>, Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>
Cc:     Xing Zhengjun <zhengjun.xing@linux.intel.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>,
        Chris Down <chris@chrisdown.name>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@fb.com>, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>,
        Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@gmail.com>,
        Yafang Shao <laoar.shao@gmail.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, lkp@lists.01.org,
        lkp@intel.com, zhengjun.xing@intel.com, ying.huang@intel.com
References: <20201102091543.GM31092@shao2-debian>
 <20201102092754.GD22613@dhcp22.suse.cz>
 <82d73ebb-a31e-4766-35b8-82afa85aa047@intel.com>
 <20201102100247.GF22613@dhcp22.suse.cz>
 <bd87e8bd-c918-3f41-0cc5-e2927d91625f@linux.intel.com>
 <20201104081546.GB10052@dhcp22.suse.cz>
 <20201112122844.GA11000@shbuild999.sh.intel.com>
 <20201112141654.GC12240@dhcp22.suse.cz>
From:   Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Organization: Red Hat
Message-ID: <7e40849b-f9e0-34d4-4254-c2c99dd71f78@redhat.com>
Date:   Thu, 12 Nov 2020 11:43:45 -0500
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On 11/12/20 9:16 AM, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 12-11-20 20:28:44, Feng Tang wrote:
>> Hi Michal,
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 09:15:46AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
>>>>>> Hi Michal,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We used the default configure of cgroups, not sure what configuration you
>>>>>> want,
>>>>>> could you give me more details? and here is the cgroup info of will-it-scale
>>>>>> process:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> $ cat /proc/3042/cgroup
>>>>>> 12:hugetlb:/
>>>>>> 11:memory:/system.slice/lkp-bootstrap.service
>>>>> OK, this means that memory controler is enabled and in use. Btw. do you
>>>>> get the original performance if you add one phony page_counter after the
>>>>> union?
>>>>>
>>>> I add one phony page_counter after the union and re-test, the regression
>>>> reduced to -1.2%. It looks like the regression caused by the data structure
>>>> layout change.
>>> Thanks for double checking. Could you try to cache align the
>>> page_counter struct? If that helps then we should figure which counters
>>> acks against each other by adding the alignement between the respective
>>> counters.
>> We tried below patch to make the 'page_counter' aligned.
>>    
>>    diff --git a/include/linux/page_counter.h b/include/linux/page_counter.h
>>    index bab7e57..9efa6f7 100644
>>    --- a/include/linux/page_counter.h
>>    +++ b/include/linux/page_counter.h
>>    @@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ struct page_counter {
>>     	/* legacy */
>>     	unsigned long watermark;
>>     	unsigned long failcnt;
>>    -};
>>    +} ____cacheline_internodealigned_in_smp;
>>     
>> and with it, the -22.7% peformance change turns to a small -1.7%, which
>> confirms the performance bump is caused by the change to data alignment.
>>
>> After the patch, size of 'page_counter' increases from 104 bytes to 128
>> bytes, and the size of 'mem_cgroup' increases from 2880 bytes to 3008
>> bytes(with our kernel config). Another major data structure which
>> contains 'page_counter' is 'hugetlb_cgroup', whose size will change
>> from 912B to 1024B.
>>
>> Should we make these page_counters aligned to reduce cacheline conflict?
> I would rather focus on a more effective mem_cgroup layout. It is very
> likely that we are just stumbling over two counters here.
>
> Could you try to add cache alignment of counters after memory and see
> which one makes the difference? I do not expect memsw to be the one
> because that one is used together with the main counter. But who knows
> maybe the way it crosses the cache line has the exact effect. Hard to
> tell without other numbers.
>
> Btw. it would be great to see what the effect is on cgroup v2 as well.
>
> Thanks for pursuing this!

The contention may be in the page counters themselves or it can be in 
other fields below the page counters. The cacheline alignment will cause 
"high_work" just after the page counters to start at a cacheline 
boundary. I will try removing the cacheline alignment in the page 
counter and add it to high_work to see there is any change in 
performance. If there is no change, the performance problem will not be 
in the page counters.

Cheers,
Longman