Re: [PATCH v2 00/10] try to reduce fragmenting fallbacks

From: Vlastimil Babka
Date: Wed Feb 15 2017 - 11:11:58 EST


On 02/15/2017 03:29 PM, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> Results for patch 4 ("count movable pages when stealing from pageblock")
> are really puzzling me, as it increases the number of fragmenting events
> for reclaimable allocations, implicating "reclaimable placed with (i.e.
> falling back to) unmovable" (which is not listed separately above, but
> follows logically from "reclaimable placed with movable" not changing
> that much). I really wonder why is that. The patch effectively only
> changes the decision to change migratetype of a pageblock, it doesn't
> affect the actual stealing decision (which is always true for
> RECLAIMABLE anyway, see can_steal_fallback()). Moreover, since we can't
> distinguish UNMOVABLE from RECLAIMABLE when counting, good_pages is 0
> and thus even the decision to change pageblock migratetype shouldn't be
> changed by the patch for this case. I must recheck the implementation...

Ah, there it is... not enough LISP

- if (pages >= (1 << (pageblock_order-1)) ||
+ /* Claim the whole block if over half of it is free or good type */
+ if (free_pages + good_pages >= (1 << (pageblock_order-1)) ||