mm: base LRU balancing on an explicit cost model

Currently, scan pressure between the anon and file LRU lists is balanced
based on a mixture of reclaim efficiency and a somewhat vague notion of
"value" of having certain pages in memory over others.  That concept of
value is problematic, because it has caused us to count any event that
remotely makes one LRU list more or less preferrable for reclaim, even
when these events are not directly comparable and impose very different
costs on the system.  One example is referenced file pages that we still
deactivate and referenced anonymous pages that we actually rotate back to
the head of the list.

There is also conceptual overlap with the LRU algorithm itself.  By
rotating recently used pages instead of reclaiming them, the algorithm
already biases the applied scan pressure based on page value.  Thus, when
rebalancing scan pressure due to rotations, we should think of reclaim
cost, and leave assessing the page value to the LRU algorithm.

Lastly, considering both value-increasing as well as value-decreasing
events can sometimes cause the same type of event to be counted twice,
i.e.  how rotating a page increases the LRU value, while reclaiming it
succesfully decreases the value.  In itself this will balance out fine,
but it quietly skews the impact of events that are only recorded once.

The abstract metric of "value", the murky relationship with the LRU
algorithm, and accounting both negative and positive events make the
current pressure balancing model hard to reason about and modify.

This patch switches to a balancing model of accounting the concrete,
actually observed cost of reclaiming one LRU over another.  For now, that
cost includes pages that are scanned but rotated back to the list head.
Subsequent patches will add consideration for IO caused by refaulting of
recently evicted pages.

Replace struct zone_reclaim_stat with two cost counters in the lruvec, and
make everything that affects cost go through a new lru_note_cost()
function.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200520232525.798933-9-hannes@cmpxchg.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 14 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/mmzone.h b/include/linux/mmzone.h
index 2f79ff4477ba..e57248ccb63d 100644
--- a/include/linux/mmzone.h
+++ b/include/linux/mmzone.h
@@ -242,19 +242,6 @@ static inline bool is_active_lru(enum lru_list lru)
 	return (lru == LRU_ACTIVE_ANON || lru == LRU_ACTIVE_FILE);
 }
 
-struct zone_reclaim_stat {
-	/*
-	 * The pageout code in vmscan.c keeps track of how many of the
-	 * mem/swap backed and file backed pages are referenced.
-	 * The higher the rotated/scanned ratio, the more valuable
-	 * that cache is.
-	 *
-	 * The anon LRU stats live in [0], file LRU stats in [1]
-	 */
-	unsigned long		recent_rotated[2];
-	unsigned long		recent_scanned[2];
-};
-
 enum lruvec_flags {
 	LRUVEC_CONGESTED,		/* lruvec has many dirty pages
 					 * backed by a congested BDI
@@ -263,7 +250,13 @@ enum lruvec_flags {
 
 struct lruvec {
 	struct list_head		lists[NR_LRU_LISTS];
-	struct zone_reclaim_stat	reclaim_stat;
+	/*
+	 * These track the cost of reclaiming one LRU - file or anon -
+	 * over the other. As the observed cost of reclaiming one LRU
+	 * increases, the reclaim scan balance tips toward the other.
+	 */
+	unsigned long			anon_cost;
+	unsigned long			file_cost;
 	/* Evictions & activations on the inactive file list */
 	atomic_long_t			inactive_age;
 	/* Refaults at the time of last reclaim cycle */