On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:38:30 -0400 Rik van Riel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nick Piggin wrote: > > > Oh, also: something like this patch would help out MADV_DONTNEED, as it > > means it can run concurrently with page faults. I think the locking will > > work (but needs forward porting). > > Ironically, your patch decreases throughput on my quad core > test system, with Jakub's test case. > > MADV_DONTNEED, my patch, 10000 loops (14k context switches/second) > > real 0m34.890s > user 0m17.256s > sys 0m29.797s > > > MADV_DONTNEED, my patch & your patch, 10000 loops (50 context > switches/second) > > real 1m8.321s > user 0m20.840s > sys 1m55.677s > > I suspect it's moving the contention onto the page table lock, > in zap_pte_range(). I guess that the thread private memory > areas must be living right next to each other, in the same > page table lock regions :) Remember that we have two different ways of doing that locking: #if NR_CPUS >= CONFIG_SPLIT_PTLOCK_CPUS /* * We tuck a spinlock to guard each pagetable page into its struct page, * at page->private, with BUILD_BUG_ON to make sure that this will not * overflow into the next struct page (as it might with DEBUG_SPINLOCK). * When freeing, reset page->mapping so free_pages_check won't complain. */ #define __pte_lockptr(page) &((page)->ptl) #define pte_lock_init(_page) do { \ spin_lock_init(__pte_lockptr(_page)); \ } while (0) #define pte_lock_deinit(page) ((page)->mapping = NULL) #define pte_lockptr(mm, pmd) ({(void)(mm); __pte_lockptr(pmd_page(*(pmd)));}) #else /* * We use mm->page_table_lock to guard all pagetable pages of the mm. */ #define pte_lock_init(page) do {} while (0) #define pte_lock_deinit(page) do {} while (0) #define pte_lockptr(mm, pmd) ({(void)(pmd); &(mm)->page_table_lock;}) #endif /* NR_CPUS < CONFIG_SPLIT_PTLOCK_CPUS */ I wonder which way you're using, and whether using the other way changes things. > For more real world workloads, like the MySQL sysbench one, > I still suspect that your patch would improve things. > > Time to move back to debugging other stuff, though. > > Andrew, it would be nice if our patches could cook in -mm > for a while. Want me to change anything before submitting? umm. I took a quick squint at a patch from you this morning and it looked OK to me. Please send the finalish thing when it is fully baked and performance-tested in the various regions of operation, thanks. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/