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Date:   Wed, 9 Nov 2022 19:31:37 -0800 (PST)
From:   Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
To:     "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>
cc:     Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>, Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>,
        Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com>,
        John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>,
        Sidhartha Kumar <sidhartha.kumar@oracle.com>,
        Muchun Song <songmuchun@bytedance.com>,
        Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>,
        Naoya Horiguchi <naoya.horiguchi@linux.dev>,
        Mina Almasry <almasrymina@google.com>,
        James Houghton <jthoughton@google.com>,
        Zach O'Keefe <zokeefe@google.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm,thp,rmap: lock_compound_mapcounts() on THP
 mapcounts
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On Sat, 5 Nov 2022, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 02, 2022 at 06:53:45PM -0700, Hugh Dickins wrote:
> > Fix the races in maintaining compound_mapcount, subpages_mapcount and
> > subpage _mapcount by using PG_locked in the first tail of any compound
> > page for a bit_spin_lock() on such modifications; skipping the usual
> > atomic operations on those fields in this case.
> > 
> > Bring page_remove_file_rmap() and page_remove_anon_compound_rmap()
> > back into page_remove_rmap() itself.  Rearrange page_add_anon_rmap()
> > and page_add_file_rmap() and page_remove_rmap() to follow the same
> > "if (compound) {lock} else if (PageCompound) {lock} else {atomic}"
> > pattern (with a PageTransHuge in the compound test, like before, to
> > avoid BUG_ONs and optimize away that block when THP is not configured).
> > Move all the stats updates outside, after the bit_spin_locked section,
> > so that it is sure to be a leaf lock.
> > 
> > Add page_dup_compound_rmap() to manage compound locking versus atomics
> > in sync with the rest.  In particular, hugetlb pages are still using
> > the atomics: to avoid unnecessary interference there, and because they
> > never have subpage mappings; but this exception can easily be changed.
> > Conveniently, page_dup_compound_rmap() turns out to suit an anon THP's
> > __split_huge_pmd_locked() too.
> > 
> > bit_spin_lock() is not popular with PREEMPT_RT folks: but PREEMPT_RT
> > sensibly excludes TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE already, so its only exposure
> > is to the non-hugetlb non-THP pte-mapped compound pages (with large
> > folios being currently dependent on TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE).  There is
> > never any scan of subpages in this case; but we have chosen to use
> > PageCompound tests rather than PageTransCompound tests to gate the
> > use of lock_compound_mapcounts(), so that page_mapped() is correct on
> > all compound pages, whether or not TRANSPARENT_HUGEPAGE is enabled:
> > could that be a problem for PREEMPT_RT, when there is contention on
> > the lock - under heavy concurrent forking for example?  If so, then it
> > can be turned into a sleeping lock (like folio_lock()) when PREEMPT_RT.
> > 
> > A simple 100 X munmap(mmap(2GB, MAP_SHARED|MAP_POPULATE, tmpfs), 2GB)
> > took 18 seconds on small pages, and used to take 1 second on huge pages,
> > but now takes 115 milliseconds on huge pages.  Mapping by pmds a second
> > time used to take 860ms and now takes 86ms; mapping by pmds after mapping
> > by ptes (when the scan is needed) used to take 870ms and now takes 495ms.
> > Mapping huge pages by ptes is largely unaffected but variable: between 5%
> > faster and 5% slower in what I've recorded.  Contention on the lock is
> > likely to behave worse than contention on the atomics behaved.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
> 
> Acked-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>

Thanks, Kirill; and there's a 4/3 posted to change around that
"if (compound) {lock} else if (PageCompound) {lock} else {atomic}"
ordering, which Linus hated.

But this might be a good place to mention, that Linus (I'd sent private
mail to sort out mm-unstable instabilities in a hurry, and discussion
ensued from there) does not like this patch very much, and has a good
idea for improving it, but has let us move forward with this for now.

His idea is for subpages_mapcount not to count all the ptes of subpages,
but to count all the subpages which have ptes (or I think that's one way
of saying it, but not how he said it): count what the stats need counted.

I was sceptical at first, because that was indeed something I had tried
at one point, but decided against.  I am hoping that it will turn out
just to be my prejudice: that I embarked on this job, in large part,
to get rid of the scan lurking inside total_mapcount().  And Linus's
idea would appear to bring back the unlocked scan in total_mapcount():
but remove all the locked scans in page_add/remove_rmap() - which,
setting aside my prejudice, sounds like a big improvement (in the
double-mapped case; common cases unchanged).

I was not enthusiastic, in that discussion several days ago, but got
quite excited once I had a moment to consider (but I've not told him so
until now).  I'll try to pursue it this weekend: maybe I'll rediscover
a good reason why it had to be abandoned, but let's hope it works out.

Anyway, what's in mm-unstable is good, and an improvement over the old
scans; but I appreciate Linus's frustration that it could be much better.

Hugh