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author | Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com> | 2018-05-14 11:13:40 +0300 |
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committer | Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> | 2018-05-21 09:30:58 -0600 |
commit | 45c9a74f648a76e1118cf8024d11cba54bd64e37 (patch) | |
tree | 60c97edb01661dcb96ae105509edb54ee367bb23 /Documentation/vm | |
parent | aa00eaa9afb0cc350590668ba6a9ecd99cfd3ad7 (diff) | |
download | linux-stable-45c9a74f648a76e1118cf8024d11cba54bd64e37.tar.gz linux-stable-45c9a74f648a76e1118cf8024d11cba54bd64e37.tar.bz2 linux-stable-45c9a74f648a76e1118cf8024d11cba54bd64e37.zip |
docs/vm: transhuge: split userspace bits to admin-guide/mm/transhuge
Now that the administrative information for transparent huge pages is
nicely separated, move it to its own page under the admin guide.
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst | 414 |
1 files changed, 2 insertions, 412 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst index 47c7e4742bc2..a8cf6809e36e 100644 --- a/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst +++ b/Documentation/vm/transhuge.rst @@ -4,418 +4,8 @@ Transparent Hugepage Support ============================ -Objective -========= - -Performance critical computing applications dealing with large memory -working sets are already running on top of libhugetlbfs and in turn -hugetlbfs. Transparent HugePage Support (THP) is an alternative mean of -using huge pages for the backing of virtual memory with huge pages -that supports the automatic promotion and demotion of page sizes and -without the shortcomings of hugetlbfs. - -Currently THP only works for anonymous memory mappings and tmpfs/shmem. -But in the future it can expand to other filesystems. - -.. note:: - in the examples below we presume that the basic page size is 4K and - the huge page size is 2M, although the actual numbers may vary - depending on the CPU architecture. - -The reason applications are running faster is because of two -factors. The first factor is almost completely irrelevant and it's not -of significant interest because it'll also have the downside of -requiring larger clear-page copy-page in page faults which is a -potentially negative effect. The first factor consists in taking a -single page fault for each 2M virtual region touched by userland (so -reducing the enter/exit kernel frequency by a 512 times factor). This -only matters the first time the memory is accessed for the lifetime of -a memory mapping. The second long lasting and much more important -factor will affect all subsequent accesses to the memory for the whole -runtime of the application. The second factor consist of two -components: - -1) the TLB miss will run faster (especially with virtualization using - nested pagetables but almost always also on bare metal without - virtualization) - -2) a single TLB entry will be mapping a much larger amount of virtual - memory in turn reducing the number of TLB misses. With - virtualization and nested pagetables the TLB can be mapped of - larger size only if both KVM and the Linux guest are using - hugepages but a significant speedup already happens if only one of - the two is using hugepages just because of the fact the TLB miss is - going to run faster. - -THP can be enabled system wide or restricted to certain tasks or even -memory ranges inside task's address space. Unless THP is completely -disabled, there is ``khugepaged`` daemon that scans memory and -collapses sequences of basic pages into huge pages. - -The THP behaviour is controlled via :ref:`sysfs <thp_sysfs>` -interface and using madivse(2) and prctl(2) system calls. - -Transparent Hugepage Support maximizes the usefulness of free memory -if compared to the reservation approach of hugetlbfs by allowing all -unused memory to be used as cache or other movable (or even unmovable -entities). It doesn't require reservation to prevent hugepage -allocation failures to be noticeable from userland. It allows paging -and all other advanced VM features to be available on the -hugepages. It requires no modifications for applications to take -advantage of it. - -Applications however can be further optimized to take advantage of -this feature, like for example they've been optimized before to avoid -a flood of mmap system calls for every malloc(4k). Optimizing userland -is by far not mandatory and khugepaged already can take care of long -lived page allocations even for hugepage unaware applications that -deals with large amounts of memory. - -In certain cases when hugepages are enabled system wide, application -may end up allocating more memory resources. An application may mmap a -large region but only touch 1 byte of it, in that case a 2M page might -be allocated instead of a 4k page for no good. This is why it's -possible to disable hugepages system-wide and to only have them inside -MADV_HUGEPAGE madvise regions. - -Embedded systems should enable hugepages only inside madvise regions -to eliminate any risk of wasting any precious byte of memory and to -only run faster. - -Applications that gets a lot of benefit from hugepages and that don't -risk to lose memory by using hugepages, should use -madvise(MADV_HUGEPAGE) on their critical mmapped regions. - -.. _thp_sysfs: - -sysfs -===== - -Global THP controls -------------------- - -Transparent Hugepage Support for anonymous memory can be entirely disabled -(mostly for debugging purposes) or only enabled inside MADV_HUGEPAGE -regions (to avoid the risk of consuming more memory resources) or enabled -system wide. This can be achieved with one of:: - - echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled - echo madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled - echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled - -It's also possible to limit defrag efforts in the VM to generate -anonymous hugepages in case they're not immediately free to madvise -regions or to never try to defrag memory and simply fallback to regular -pages unless hugepages are immediately available. Clearly if we spend CPU -time to defrag memory, we would expect to gain even more by the fact we -use hugepages later instead of regular pages. This isn't always -guaranteed, but it may be more likely in case the allocation is for a -MADV_HUGEPAGE region. - -:: - - echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - echo defer >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - echo defer+madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - echo madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag - -always - means that an application requesting THP will stall on - allocation failure and directly reclaim pages and compact - memory in an effort to allocate a THP immediately. This may be - desirable for virtual machines that benefit heavily from THP - use and are willing to delay the VM start to utilise them. - -defer - means that an application will wake kswapd in the background - to reclaim pages and wake kcompactd to compact memory so that - THP is available in the near future. It's the responsibility - of khugepaged to then install the THP pages later. - -defer+madvise - will enter direct reclaim and compaction like ``always``, but - only for regions that have used madvise(MADV_HUGEPAGE); all - other regions will wake kswapd in the background to reclaim - pages and wake kcompactd to compact memory so that THP is - available in the near future. - -madvise - will enter direct reclaim like ``always`` but only for regions - that are have used madvise(MADV_HUGEPAGE). This is the default - behaviour. - -never - should be self-explanatory. - -By default kernel tries to use huge zero page on read page fault to -anonymous mapping. It's possible to disable huge zero page by writing 0 -or enable it back by writing 1:: - - echo 0 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/use_zero_page - echo 1 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/use_zero_page - -Some userspace (such as a test program, or an optimized memory allocation -library) may want to know the size (in bytes) of a transparent hugepage:: - - cat /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hpage_pmd_size - -khugepaged will be automatically started when -transparent_hugepage/enabled is set to "always" or "madvise, and it'll -be automatically shutdown if it's set to "never". - -Khugepaged controls -------------------- - -khugepaged runs usually at low frequency so while one may not want to -invoke defrag algorithms synchronously during the page faults, it -should be worth invoking defrag at least in khugepaged. However it's -also possible to disable defrag in khugepaged by writing 0 or enable -defrag in khugepaged by writing 1:: - - echo 0 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/defrag - echo 1 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/defrag - -You can also control how many pages khugepaged should scan at each -pass:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/pages_to_scan - -and how many milliseconds to wait in khugepaged between each pass (you -can set this to 0 to run khugepaged at 100% utilization of one core):: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/scan_sleep_millisecs - -and how many milliseconds to wait in khugepaged if there's an hugepage -allocation failure to throttle the next allocation attempt:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/alloc_sleep_millisecs - -The khugepaged progress can be seen in the number of pages collapsed:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/pages_collapsed - -for each pass:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/full_scans - -``max_ptes_none`` specifies how many extra small pages (that are -not already mapped) can be allocated when collapsing a group -of small pages into one large page:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/max_ptes_none - -A higher value leads to use additional memory for programs. -A lower value leads to gain less thp performance. Value of -max_ptes_none can waste cpu time very little, you can -ignore it. - -``max_ptes_swap`` specifies how many pages can be brought in from -swap when collapsing a group of pages into a transparent huge page:: - - /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/max_ptes_swap - -A higher value can cause excessive swap IO and waste -memory. A lower value can prevent THPs from being -collapsed, resulting fewer pages being collapsed into -THPs, and lower memory access performance. - -Boot parameter -============== - -You can change the sysfs boot time defaults of Transparent Hugepage -Support by passing the parameter ``transparent_hugepage=always`` or -``transparent_hugepage=madvise`` or ``transparent_hugepage=never`` -to the kernel command line. - -Hugepages in tmpfs/shmem -======================== - -You can control hugepage allocation policy in tmpfs with mount option -``huge=``. It can have following values: - -always - Attempt to allocate huge pages every time we need a new page; - -never - Do not allocate huge pages; - -within_size - Only allocate huge page if it will be fully within i_size. - Also respect fadvise()/madvise() hints; - -advise - Only allocate huge pages if requested with fadvise()/madvise(); - -The default policy is ``never``. - -``mount -o remount,huge= /mountpoint`` works fine after mount: remounting -``huge=never`` will not attempt to break up huge pages at all, just stop more -from being allocated. - -There's also sysfs knob to control hugepage allocation policy for internal -shmem mount: /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/shmem_enabled. The mount -is used for SysV SHM, memfds, shared anonymous mmaps (of /dev/zero or -MAP_ANONYMOUS), GPU drivers' DRM objects, Ashmem. - -In addition to policies listed above, shmem_enabled allows two further -values: - -deny - For use in emergencies, to force the huge option off from - all mounts; -force - Force the huge option on for all - very useful for testing; - -Need of application restart -=========================== - -The transparent_hugepage/enabled values and tmpfs mount option only affect -future behavior. So to make them effective you need to restart any -application that could have been using hugepages. This also applies to the -regions registered in khugepaged. - -Monitoring usage -================ - -The number of anonymous transparent huge pages currently used by the -system is available by reading the AnonHugePages field in ``/proc/meminfo``. -To identify what applications are using anonymous transparent huge pages, -it is necessary to read ``/proc/PID/smaps`` and count the AnonHugePages fields -for each mapping. - -The number of file transparent huge pages mapped to userspace is available -by reading ShmemPmdMapped and ShmemHugePages fields in ``/proc/meminfo``. -To identify what applications are mapping file transparent huge pages, it -is necessary to read ``/proc/PID/smaps`` and count the FileHugeMapped fields -for each mapping. - -Note that reading the smaps file is expensive and reading it -frequently will incur overhead. - -There are a number of counters in ``/proc/vmstat`` that may be used to -monitor how successfully the system is providing huge pages for use. - -thp_fault_alloc - is incremented every time a huge page is successfully - allocated to handle a page fault. This applies to both the - first time a page is faulted and for COW faults. - -thp_collapse_alloc - is incremented by khugepaged when it has found - a range of pages to collapse into one huge page and has - successfully allocated a new huge page to store the data. - -thp_fault_fallback - is incremented if a page fault fails to allocate - a huge page and instead falls back to using small pages. - -thp_collapse_alloc_failed - is incremented if khugepaged found a range - of pages that should be collapsed into one huge page but failed - the allocation. - -thp_file_alloc - is incremented every time a file huge page is successfully - allocated. - -thp_file_mapped - is incremented every time a file huge page is mapped into - user address space. - -thp_split_page - is incremented every time a huge page is split into base - pages. This can happen for a variety of reasons but a common - reason is that a huge page is old and is being reclaimed. - This action implies splitting all PMD the page mapped with. - -thp_split_page_failed - is incremented if kernel fails to split huge - page. This can happen if the page was pinned by somebody. - -thp_deferred_split_page - is incremented when a huge page is put onto split - queue. This happens when a huge page is partially unmapped and - splitting it would free up some memory. Pages on split queue are - going to be split under memory pressure. - -thp_split_pmd - is incremented every time a PMD split into table of PTEs. - This can happen, for instance, when application calls mprotect() or - munmap() on part of huge page. It doesn't split huge page, only - page table entry. - -thp_zero_page_alloc - is incremented every time a huge zero page is - successfully allocated. It includes allocations which where - dropped due race with other allocation. Note, it doesn't count - every map of the huge zero page, only its allocation. - -thp_zero_page_alloc_failed - is incremented if kernel fails to allocate - huge zero page and falls back to using small pages. - -thp_swpout - is incremented every time a huge page is swapout in one - piece without splitting. - -thp_swpout_fallback - is incremented if a huge page has to be split before swapout. - Usually because failed to allocate some continuous swap space - for the huge page. - -As the system ages, allocating huge pages may be expensive as the -system uses memory compaction to copy data around memory to free a -huge page for use. There are some counters in ``/proc/vmstat`` to help -monitor this overhead. - -compact_stall - is incremented every time a process stalls to run - memory compaction so that a huge page is free for use. - -compact_success - is incremented if the system compacted memory and - freed a huge page for use. - -compact_fail - is incremented if the system tries to compact memory - but failed. - -compact_pages_moved - is incremented each time a page is moved. If - this value is increasing rapidly, it implies that the system - is copying a lot of data to satisfy the huge page allocation. - It is possible that the cost of copying exceeds any savings - from reduced TLB misses. - -compact_pagemigrate_failed - is incremented when the underlying mechanism - for moving a page failed. - -compact_blocks_moved - is incremented each time memory compaction examines - a huge page aligned range of pages. - -It is possible to establish how long the stalls were using the function -tracer to record how long was spent in __alloc_pages_nodemask and -using the mm_page_alloc tracepoint to identify which allocations were -for huge pages. - -Optimizing the applications -=========================== - -To be guaranteed that the kernel will map a 2M page immediately in any -memory region, the mmap region has to be hugepage naturally -aligned. posix_memalign() can provide that guarantee. - -Hugetlbfs -========= - -You can use hugetlbfs on a kernel that has transparent hugepage -support enabled just fine as always. No difference can be noted in -hugetlbfs other than there will be less overall fragmentation. All -usual features belonging to hugetlbfs are preserved and -unaffected. libhugetlbfs will also work fine as usual. +This document describes design principles Transparent Hugepage (THP) +Support and its interaction with other parts of the memory management. Design principles ================= |