aim7 scalability issue on 4 socket machine

[Zhang, Yanmin]

ïAim7 result is bad on my new Nehalem machines (4*8*2 logical cpu). Perf counter
shows spinlock consumes 70% cpu time on the machine. Lock_stat shows
anon_vma->lock causes most of the spinlock contention. Function tracer shows
below call chain creates the spinlock.

do_brk => vma_merge =>vma_adjust

Aim7 consists of lots of subtests. One test is to fork lots of processes and
every process calls sbrk for 1000 times to grow/shrink the heap. All the vma of
the heap of all sub-processes point to the same anon_vma and use the same
anon_vma->lock. When sbrk is called, kernel calls do_brk => vma_merge =>vma_adjust
and lock anon_vma->lock to create spinlock contentions.

There is a comment section in front of spin_lock(&anon_vma->lock. It says
anon_vma lock can be optimized when just changing vma->vm_end. As a matter
of fact, anon_vma->lock is used to protect anon_vma->list when an entry is
deleted/inserted or the list is accessed. There is no such deletion/insertion
if only vma->end is changed in function vma_adjust.

Below patch fixes it.

Test results with kernel 2.6.31-rc8. The improvement on the machine is about 150%.

ïïSigned-off-by: Zhang Yanmin <yanmin_zhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

---

--- linux-2.6.31-rc8/mm/mmap.c	2009-09-03 10:03:57.000000000 +0800
+++ linux-2.6.31-rc8_aim7/mm/mmap.c	2009-09-17 19:11:20.000000000 +0800
@@ -512,6 +512,7 @@ void vma_adjust(struct vm_area_struct *v
 	struct anon_vma *anon_vma = NULL;
 	long adjust_next = 0;
 	int remove_next = 0;
+	int anon_vma_use_lock;
 
 	if (next && !insert) {
 		if (end >= next->vm_end) {
@@ -568,22 +569,32 @@ again:			remove_next = 1 + (end > next->
 		}
 	}
 
-	/*
-	 * When changing only vma->vm_end, we don't really need
-	 * anon_vma lock: but is that case worth optimizing out?
-	 */
 	if (vma->anon_vma)
 		anon_vma = vma->anon_vma;
+	anon_vma_use_lock = 0;
 	if (anon_vma) {
-		spin_lock(&anon_vma->lock);
 		/*
-		 * Easily overlooked: when mprotect shifts the boundary,
-		 * make sure the expanding vma has anon_vma set if the
-		 * shrinking vma had, to cover any anon pages imported.
+		 * When changing only vma->vm_end, we don't really need
+		 * anon_vma lock.
+		 * ana_vma->lock is to protect the access to the list
+		 * started from anon_vma->head. If we don't remove or
+		 * insert a vma to the list, and also don't access
+		 * the list, we don't need  ana_vma->lock.
 		 */
-		if (importer && !importer->anon_vma) {
-			importer->anon_vma = anon_vma;
-			__anon_vma_link(importer);
+		if (remove_next ||
+			insert ||
+			(importer && !importer->anon_vma)) {
+			anon_vma_use_lock = 1;
+			spin_lock(&anon_vma->lock);
+			/*
+			 * Easily overlooked: when mprotect shifts the boundary,
+			 * make sure the expanding vma has anon_vma set if the
+			 * shrinking vma had, to cover any anon pages imported.
+			 */
+			if (importer && !importer->anon_vma) {
+				importer->anon_vma = anon_vma;
+				__anon_vma_link(importer);
+			}
 		}
 	}
 
@@ -628,7 +639,7 @@ again:			remove_next = 1 + (end > next->
 		__insert_vm_struct(mm, insert);
 	}
 
-	if (anon_vma)
+	if (anon_vma_use_lock)
 		spin_unlock(&anon_vma->lock);
 	if (mapping)
 		spin_unlock(&mapping->i_mmap_lock);


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