Re: [PATCH] mm: filemap: Avoid unnecessary barries and waitqueue lookups in unlock_page fastpath v5

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Wed May 21 2014 - 11:34:12 EST


On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 03:02:23PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 01:15:01PM +0100, Mel Gorman wrote:
> > Andrew had suggested dropping v4 of the patch entirely as the numbers were
> > marginal and the complexity was high. However, even on a relatively small
> > machine running simple workloads the overhead of page_waitqueue and wakeup
> > functions is around 5% of system CPU time. That's quite high for basic
> > operations so I felt it was worth another shot. The performance figures
> > are better with this version than they were for v4 and overall the patch
> > should be more comprehensible.
>
> Simpler patch and better performance, yay!
>
> > This patch introduces a new page flag for 64-bit capable machines,
> > PG_waiters, to signal there are processes waiting on PG_lock and uses it to
> > avoid memory barriers and waitqueue hash lookup in the unlock_page fastpath.
>
> The patch seems to also explicitly use it for PG_writeback, yet no
> mention of that here.
>

I'll add a note.

> > diff --git a/kernel/sched/wait.c b/kernel/sched/wait.c
> > index 0ffa20a..f829e73 100644
> > --- a/kernel/sched/wait.c
> > +++ b/kernel/sched/wait.c
> > @@ -167,31 +167,39 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(__wake_up_sync); /* For internal use only */
> > * stops them from bleeding out - it would still allow subsequent
> > * loads to move into the critical region).
> > */
> > +static inline void
>
> Make that __always_inline, that way we're guaranteed to optimize the
> build time constant .page=NULL cases.
>

Done.

> > +__prepare_to_wait(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait,
> > + struct page *page, int state, bool exclusive)
> > {
> > unsigned long flags;
> >
> > + if (page && !PageWaiters(page))
> > + SetPageWaiters(page);
> > + if (list_empty(&wait->task_list)) {
> > + if (exclusive) {
> > + wait->flags |= WQ_FLAG_EXCLUSIVE;
> > + __add_wait_queue_tail(q, wait);
> > + } else {
>
> I'm fairly sure we've just initialized the wait thing to 0, so clearing
> the bit would be superfluous.
>

I assume you mean the clearing of WQ_FLAG_EXCLUSIVE. It may or may not be
superflous. If it's an on-stack wait_queue_t initialised with DEFINE_WAIT()
then it's redundant. If it's a wait_queue_t that is being reused and
sometimes used for exclusive waits and other times for non-exclusive
waits then it's required. The API allows this to happen so I see no harm
is clearing the flag like the old code did. Am I missing your point?

> > + wait->flags &= ~WQ_FLAG_EXCLUSIVE;
> > + __add_wait_queue(q, wait);
> > + }
> > + }
> > set_current_state(state);
> > spin_unlock_irqrestore(&q->lock, flags);
> > }
> > +
> > +void
> > +prepare_to_wait(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait, int state)
> > +{
> > + return __prepare_to_wait(q, wait, NULL, state, false);
> > +}
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(prepare_to_wait);
> >
> > void
> > prepare_to_wait_exclusive(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait, int state)
> > {
> > + return __prepare_to_wait(q, wait, NULL, state, true);
> > }
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(prepare_to_wait_exclusive);
> >
> > @@ -228,7 +236,8 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(prepare_to_wait_event);
> > * the wait descriptor from the given waitqueue if still
> > * queued.
> > */
> > +static inline void __finish_wait(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait,
> > + struct page *page)
> > {
>
> Same thing, make that __always_inline.
>

Done.

> > unsigned long flags;
> >
> > @@ -249,9 +258,16 @@ void finish_wait(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait)
> > if (!list_empty_careful(&wait->task_list)) {
> > spin_lock_irqsave(&q->lock, flags);
> > list_del_init(&wait->task_list);
> > + if (page && !waitqueue_active(q))
> > + ClearPageWaiters(page);
> > spin_unlock_irqrestore(&q->lock, flags);
> > }
> > }
> > +
> > +void finish_wait(wait_queue_head_t *q, wait_queue_t *wait)
> > +{
> > + return __finish_wait(q, wait, NULL);
> > +}
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(finish_wait);
> >
> > /**
>
> > @@ -374,6 +427,19 @@ int __sched out_of_line_wait_on_bit_lock(void *word, int bit,
> > }
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL(out_of_line_wait_on_bit_lock);
> >
> > +void __wake_up_page_bit(wait_queue_head_t *wqh, struct page *page, void *word, int bit)
> > +{
> > + struct wait_bit_key key = __WAIT_BIT_KEY_INITIALIZER(word, bit);
> > + unsigned long flags;
> > +
> > + spin_lock_irqsave(&wqh->lock, flags);
> > + if (waitqueue_active(wqh))
> > + __wake_up_common(wqh, TASK_NORMAL, 1, 0, &key);
> > + else
> > + ClearPageWaiters(page);
> > + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&wqh->lock, flags);
> > +}
>
> Seeing how word is always going to be &page->flags, might it make sense
> to remove that argument?
>

The wait_queue was defined on-stack with DEFINE_WAIT_BIT which uses
wake_bit_function() as a wakeup function and that thing consumes both the
page->flags and the bit number it's interested in. This is used for both
PG_writeback and PG_locked so assumptions cannot really be made about
the value.

--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs
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