Re: [LSF/MM TOPIC] NUMA remote THP vs NUMA local non-THP under MADV_HUGEPAGE

From: Michal Hocko
Date: Wed Jan 30 2019 - 02:18:08 EST


On Tue 29-01-19 18:40:58, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'd like to attend the LSF/MM Summit 2019. I'm interested in most MM
> topics and it's enlightening to listen to the common non-MM topics
> too.
>
> One current topic that could be of interest is the THP / NUMA tradeoff
> in subject.
>
> One issue about a change in MADV_HUGEPAGE behavior made ~3 years ago
> kept floating around for the last 6 months (~12 months since it was
> initially reported as regression through an enterprise-like workload)
> and it was hot-fixed in commit
> ac5b2c18911ffe95c08d69273917f90212cf5659, but it got quickly reverted
> for various reasons.
>
> I posted some benchmark results showing that for tasks without strong
> NUMA locality the __GFP_THISNODE logic is not guaranteed to be optimal
> (and here of course I mean even if we ignore the large slowdown with
> swap storms at allocation time that might be caused by
> __GFP_THISNODE). The results also show NUMA remote THPs help
> intrasocket as well as intersocket.
>
> https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181210044916.GC24097@xxxxxxxxxx
> https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181212104418.GE1130@xxxxxxxxxx
>
> The following seems the interim conclusion which I happen to be in
> agreement with Michal and Mel:
>
> https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181212095051.GO1286@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181212170016.GG1130@xxxxxxxxxx

I am definitely interested in discussing this topic and actually wanted
to propose it myself. I would add that part of the discussion was
proposing a neww memory policy that would effectively enable per-vma
node-reclaim like behavior.
--
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs