Re: [PATCH RFC 04/37] mm: Add MIGRATE_METADATA allocation policy

[Hyesoo Yu]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 01:40:39PM +0100, Alexandru Elisei wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 10:28:24AM +0900, Hyesoo Yu wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 02:13:17PM +0100, Alexandru Elisei wrote:
> > > Some architectures implement hardware memory coloring to catch incorrect
> > > usage of memory allocation. One such architecture is arm64, which calls its
> > > hardware implementation Memory Tagging Extension.
> > > 
> > > So far, the memory which stores the metadata has been configured by
> > > firmware and hidden from Linux. For arm64, it is impossible to to have the
> > > entire system RAM allocated with metadata because executable memory cannot
> > > be tagged. Furthermore, in practice, only a chunk of all the memory that
> > > can have tags is actually used as tagged. which leaves a portion of
> > > metadata memory unused. As such, it would be beneficial to use this memory,
> > > which so far has been unaccessible to Linux, to service allocation
> > > requests. To prepare for exposing this metadata memory a new migratetype is
> > > being added to the page allocator, called MIGRATE_METADATA.
> > > 
> > > One important aspect is that for arm64 the memory that stores metadata
> > > cannot have metadata associated with it, it can only be used to store
> > > metadata for other pages. This means that the page allocator will *not*
> > > allocate from this migratetype if at least one of the following is true:
> > > 
> > > - The allocation also needs metadata to be allocated.
> > > - The allocation isn't movable. A metadata page storing data must be
> > >   able to be migrated at any given time so it can be repurposed to store
> > >   metadata.
> > > 
> > > Both cases are specific to arm64's implementation of memory metadata.
> > > 
> > > For now, metadata storage pages management is disabled, and it will be
> > > enabled once the architecture-specific handling is added.
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Alexandru Elisei <alexandru.elisei@xxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > > [..]
> > > @@ -2144,6 +2156,15 @@ __rmqueue(struct zone *zone, unsigned int order, int migratetype,
> > >  		if (alloc_flags & ALLOC_CMA)
> > >  			page = __rmqueue_cma_fallback(zone, order);
> > >  
> > > +		/*
> > > +		 * Allocate data pages from MIGRATE_METADATA only if the regular
> > > +		 * allocation path fails to increase the chance that the
> > > +		 * metadata page is available when the associated data page
> > > +		 * needs it.
> > > +		 */
> > > +		if (!page && (alloc_flags & ALLOC_FROM_METADATA))
> > > +			page = __rmqueue_metadata_fallback(zone, order);
> > > +
> > 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I guess it would cause non-movable page starving issue as CMA.
> 
> I don't understand what you mean by "non-movable page starving issue as
> CMA". Would you care to elaborate?
> 

Before below patch, I frequently encountered situations where there was free CMA memory
available but the allocation of unmovable page failed. That patch has improved this
issue. ("mm,page_alloc,cma: conditionally prefer cma pageblocks for movable allocations)
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20200306150102.3e77354b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

I guess it would be beneficial to add a policy for effectively utilizing the metadata
area as well. I think migration is cheaper than app killing or swap in terms
of performance.

But, if the next iteration tries to use only cma, as discussed in recent mailing lists,
I think this concern would be fine.

Thanks,
Regards.

> > The metadata pages cannot be used for non-movable allocations.
> > Metadata pages are utilized poorly, non-movable allocations may end up
> > getting starved if all regular movable pages are allocated and the only
> > pages left are metadata. If the system has a lot of CMA pages, then
> > this problem would become more bad. I think it would be better to make
> > use of it in places where performance is not critical, including some
> > GFP_METADATA ?
> 
> GFP_METADATA pages must be used only for movable allocations. The kernel
> must be able to migrate GFP_METADATA pages (if they have been allocated)
> when they are reserved to serve as tag storage for a newly allocated tagged
> page.
> 
> If you are referring to the fact that GFP_METADATA pages are allocated only
> when there are no more free pages in the zone, then yes, I can understand
> that that might be an issue. However, it's worth keeping in mind that if a
> GFP_METADATA page is in use when it needs to be repurposed to serve as tag
> storage, its contents must be migrated first, and this is obviously slow.
> 
> To put it another way, the more eager the page allocator is to allocate
> from GFP_METADATA, the slower it will be to allocate tagged pages because
> reserving the corresponding tag storage will be slow due to migration.
> 
> Before making a decision, I think it would be very helpful to run
> performance tests with different allocation policies for GFP_METADATA. But I
> would say that it's a bit premature for that, and I think it would be best
> to wait until the series stabilizes.
> 
> And thank you for the feedback!
> 
> Alex
> 
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Hyesoo Yu.
>