mm, page_alloc: spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation

mm, page_alloc: spread allocations across zones before introducing fragmentation

Patch series "Fragmentation avoidance improvements", v5.

It has been noted before that fragmentation avoidance (aka
anti-fragmentation) is not perfect. Given sufficient time or an adverse
workload, memory gets fragmented and the long-term success of high-order
allocations degrades. This series defines an adverse workload, a definition
of external fragmentation events (including serious) ones and a series
that reduces the level of those fragmentation events.

The details of the workload and the consequences are described in more
detail in the changelogs. However, from patch 1, this is a high-level
summary of the adverse workload. The exact details are found in the
mmtests implementation.

The broad details of the workload are as follows;

1. Create an XFS filesystem (not specified in the configuration but done
   as part of the testing for this patch)
2. Start 4 fio threads that write a number of 64K files inefficiently.
   Inefficiently means that files are created on first access and not
   created in advance (fio parameterr create_on_open=1) and fallocate
   is not used (fallocate=none). With multiple IO issuers this creates
   a mix of slab and page cache allocations over time. The total size
   of the files is 150% physical memory so that the slabs and page cache
   pages get mixed
3. Warm up a number of fio read-only threads accessing the same files
   created in step 2. This part runs for the same length of time it
   took to create the files. It'll fault back in old data and further
   interleave slab and page cache allocations. As it's now low on
   memory due to step 2, fragmentation occurs as pageblocks get
   stolen.
4. While step 3 is still running, start a process that tries to allocate
   75% of memory as huge pages with a number of threads. The number of
   threads is based on a (NR_CPUS_SOCKET - NR_FIO_THREADS)/4 to avoid THP
   threads contending with fio, any other threads or forcing cross-NUMA
   scheduling. Note that the test has not been used on a machine with less
   than 8 cores. The benchmark records whether huge pages were allocated
   and what the fault latency was in microseconds
5. Measure the number of events potentially causing external fragmentation,
   the fault latency and the huge page allocation success rate.
6. Cleanup

Overall the series reduces external fragmentation causing events by over 94%
on 1 and 2 socket machines, which in turn impacts high-order allocation
success rates over the long term. There are differences in latencies and
high-order allocation success rates. Latencies are a mixed bag as they
are vulnerable to exact system state and whether allocations succeeded
so they are treated as a secondary metric.

Patch 1 uses lower zones if they are populated and have free memory
	instead of fragmenting a higher zone. It's special cased to
	handle a Normal->DMA32 fallback with the reasons explained
	in the changelog.

Patch 2-4 boosts watermarks temporarily when an external fragmentation
	event occurs. kswapd wakes to reclaim a small amount of old memory
	and then wakes kcompactd on completion to recover the system
	slightly. This introduces some overhead in the slowpath. The level
	of boosting can be tuned or disabled depending on the tolerance
	for fragmentation vs allocation latency.

Patch 5 stalls some movable allocation requests to let kswapd from patch 4
	make some progress. The duration of the stalls is very low but it
	is possible to tune the system to avoid fragmentation events if
	larger stalls can be tolerated.

The bulk of the improvement in fragmentation avoidance is from patches
1-4 but patch 5 can deal with a rare corner case and provides the option
of tuning a system for THP allocation success rates in exchange for
some stalls to control fragmentation.

This patch (of 5):

The page allocator zone lists are iterated based on the watermarks of each
zone which does not take anti-fragmentation into account.  On x86, node 0
may have multiple zones while other nodes have one zone.  A consequence is
that tasks running on node 0 may fragment ZONE_NORMAL even though
ZONE_DMA32 has plenty of free memory.  This patch special cases the
allocator fast path such that it'll try an allocation from a lower local
zone before fragmenting a higher zone.  In this case, stealing of
pageblocks or orders larger than a pageblock are still allowed in the fast
path as they are uninteresting from a fragmentation point of view.

This was evaluated using a benchmark designed to fragment memory before
attempting THP allocations.  It's implemented in mmtests as the following
configurations

configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale
configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-defrag
configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage

e.g. from mmtests
./run-mmtests.sh --run-monitor --config configs/config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale test-run-1

The broad details of the workload are as follows;

1. Create an XFS filesystem (not specified in the configuration but done
   as part of the testing for this patch).
2. Start 4 fio threads that write a number of 64K files inefficiently.
   Inefficiently means that files are created on first access and not
   created in advance (fio parameter create_on_open=1) and fallocate
   is not used (fallocate=none). With multiple IO issuers this creates
   a mix of slab and page cache allocations over time. The total size
   of the files is 150% physical memory so that the slabs and page cache
   pages get mixed.
3. Warm up a number of fio read-only processes accessing the same files
   created in step 2. This part runs for the same length of time it
   took to create the files. It'll refault old data and further
   interleave slab and page cache allocations. As it's now low on
   memory due to step 2, fragmentation occurs as pageblocks get
   stolen.
4. While step 3 is still running, start a process that tries to allocate
   75% of memory as huge pages with a number of threads. The number of
   threads is based on a (NR_CPUS_SOCKET - NR_FIO_THREADS)/4 to avoid THP
   threads contending with fio, any other threads or forcing cross-NUMA
   scheduling. Note that the test has not been used on a machine with less
   than 8 cores. The benchmark records whether huge pages were allocated
   and what the fault latency was in microseconds.
5. Measure the number of events potentially causing external fragmentation,
   the fault latency and the huge page allocation success rate.
6. Cleanup the test files.

Note that due to the use of IO and page cache that this benchmark is not
suitable for running on large machines where the time to fragment memory
may be excessive.  Also note that while this is one mix that generates
fragmentation that it's not the only mix that generates fragmentation.
Differences in workload that are more slab-intensive or whether SLUB is
used with high-order pages may yield different results.

When the page allocator fragments memory, it records the event using the
mm_page_alloc_extfrag ftrace event.  If the fallback_order is smaller than
a pageblock order (order-9 on 64-bit x86) then it's considered to be an
"external fragmentation event" that may cause issues in the future.
Hence, the primary metric here is the number of external fragmentation
events that occur with order < 9.  The secondary metric is allocation
latency and huge page allocation success rates but note that differences
in latencies and what the success rate also can affect the number of
external fragmentation event which is why it's a secondary metric.

1-socket Skylake machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 1 THP allocating thread
--------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:   804694
4.20-rc3+patch:                      408912 (49% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1      662.92 (   0.00%)      653.58 *   1.41%*
Amean     fault-huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        0.00 (   0.00%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-1        0.00 (   0.00%)        0.00 (   0.00%)

Fault latencies are slightly reduced while allocation success rates remain
at zero as this configuration does not make any special effort to allocate
THP and fio is heavily active at the time and either filling memory or
keeping pages resident.  However, a 49% reduction of serious fragmentation
events reduces the changes of external fragmentation being a problem in
the future.

Vlastimil asked during review for a breakdown of the allocation types
that are falling back.

vanilla
   3816 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
 800845 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
     33 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE

patch
    735 MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE
 408135 MIGRATE_MOVABLE
     42 MIGRATE_UNRECLAIMABLE

The majority of the fallbacks are due to movable allocations and this is
consistent for the workload throughout the series so will not be presented
again as the primary source of fallbacks are movable allocations.

Movable fallbacks are sometimes considered "ok" to fallback because they
can be migrated.  The problem is that they can fill an
unmovable/reclaimable pageblock causing those allocations to fallback
later and polluting pageblocks with pages that cannot move.  If there is a
movable fallback, it is pretty much guaranteed to affect an
unmovable/reclaimable pageblock and while it might not be enough to
actually cause a unmovable/reclaimable fallback in the future, we cannot
know that in advance so the patch takes the only option available to it.
Hence, it's important to control them.  This point is also consistent
throughout the series and will not be repeated.

1-socket Skylake machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  291392
4.20-rc3+patch:                     191187 (34% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-1     1495.14 (   0.00%)     1467.55 (   1.85%)
Amean     fault-huge-1     1098.48 (   0.00%)     1127.11 (  -2.61%)

thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-1       78.57 (   0.00%)       77.64 (  -1.18%)

Fragmentation events were reduced quite a bit although this is known
to be a little variable. The latencies and allocation success rates
are similar but they were already quite high.

2-socket Haswell machine
config-global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale XFS (no special madvise)
4 fio threads, 5 THP allocating threads
----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9:  215698
4.20-rc3+patch:                     200210 (7% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     1350.05 (   0.00%)     1346.45 (   0.27%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     4181.01 (   0.00%)     3418.60 (  18.24%)

                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-5        1.15 (   0.00%)        0.78 ( -31.88%)

The reduction of external fragmentation events is slight and this is
partially due to the removal of __GFP_THISNODE in commit ac5b2c18911f
("mm: thp: relax __GFP_THISNODE for MADV_HUGEPAGE mappings") as THP
allocations can now spill over to remote nodes instead of fragmenting
local memory.

2-socket Haswell machine
global-dhp__workload_thpfioscale-madvhugepage-xfs (MADV_HUGEPAGE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------

4.20-rc3 extfrag events < order 9: 166352
4.20-rc3+patch:                    147463 (11% reduction)

thpfioscale Fault Latencies
                                   4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                      vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Amean     fault-base-5     6138.97 (   0.00%)     6217.43 (  -1.28%)
Amean     fault-huge-5     2294.28 (   0.00%)     3163.33 * -37.88%*

thpfioscale Percentage Faults Huge
                              4.20.0-rc3             4.20.0-rc3
                                 vanilla           lowzone-v5r8
Percentage huge-5       96.82 (   0.00%)       95.14 (  -1.74%)

There was a slight reduction in external fragmentation events although the
latencies were higher.  The allocation success rate is high enough that
the system is struggling and there is quite a lot of parallel reclaim and
compaction activity.  There is also a certain degree of luck on whether
processes start on node 0 or not for this patch but the relevance is
reduced later in the series.

Overall, the patch reduces the number of external fragmentation causing
events so the success of THP over long periods of time would be improved
for this adverse workload.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181123114528.28802-2-mgorman@techsingularity.net
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Zi Yan <zi.yan@cs.rutgers.edu>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>