tree 9bc450992755e8a54d7a35ceec93d9179a6f4b88
parent 3a1086fba92b6e2311b6a342f68bc380beb240fe
author Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> 1423697301 -0800
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1423703166 -0800

mm: more aggressive page stealing for UNMOVABLE allocations

When allocation falls back to stealing free pages of another migratetype,
it can decide to steal extra pages, or even the whole pageblock in order
to reduce fragmentation, which could happen if further allocation
fallbacks pick a different pageblock.  In try_to_steal_freepages(), one of
the situations where extra pages are stolen happens when we are trying to
allocate a MIGRATE_RECLAIMABLE page.

However, MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE allocations are not treated the same way,
although spreading such allocation over multiple fallback pageblocks is
arguably even worse than it is for RECLAIMABLE allocations.  To minimize
fragmentation, we should minimize the number of such fallbacks, and thus
steal as much as is possible from each fallback pageblock.

Note that in theory this might put more pressure on movable pageblocks and
cause movable allocations to steal back from unmovable pageblocks.
However, movable allocations are not as aggressive with stealing, and do
not cause permanent fragmentation, so the tradeoff is reasonable, and
evaluation seems to support the change.

This patch thus adds a check for MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE to the decision to
steal extra free pages.  When evaluating with stress-highalloc from
mmtests, this has reduced the number of MIGRATE_UNMOVABLE fallbacks to
roughly 1/6.  The number of these fallbacks stealing from MIGRATE_MOVABLE
block is reduced to 1/3.  There was no observation of growing number of
unmovable pageblocks over time, and also not of increased movable
allocation fallbacks.

Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Zhang Yanfei <zhangyanfei@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Cc: "Aneesh Kumar K.V" <aneesh.kumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>