* Davidlohr Bueso <davidl...@hp.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2013-11-03 at 11:12 +0100, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > * Davidlohr Bueso <davidl...@hp.com> wrote:
> >
> > > While caching the last used vma already does a nice job avoiding
> > > having to iterate the rbtree in find_vma, we can improve. After
> > > studying the hit rate on a load of workloads and environments,
> > > it was seen that it was around 45-50% - constant for a standard
> > > desktop system (gnome3 + evolution + firefox + a few xterms),
> > > and multiple java related workloads (including Hadoop/terasort),
> > > and aim7, which indicates it's better than the 35% value documented
> > > in the code.
> > >
> > > By also caching the largest vma, that is, the one that contains
> > > most addresses, there is a steady 10-15% hit rate gain, putting
> > > it above the 60% region. This improvement comes at a very low
> > > overhead for a miss. Furthermore, systems with !CONFIG_MMU keep
> > > the current logic.
> > >
> > > This patch introduces a second mmap_cache pointer, which is just
> > > as racy as the first, but as we already know, doesn't matter in
> > > this context. For documentation purposes, I have also added the
> > > ACCESS_ONCE() around mm->mmap_cache updates, keeping it consistent
> > > with the reads.
> > >
> > > Cc: Hugh Dickins <hu...@google.com>
> > > Cc: Michel Lespinasse <wal...@google.com>
> > > Cc: Ingo Molnar <mi...@kernel.org>
> > > Cc: Mel Gorman <mgor...@suse.de>
> > > Cc: Rik van Riel <r...@redhat.com>
> > > Cc: Guan Xuetao <g...@mprc.pku.edu.cn>
> > > Signed-off-by: Davidlohr Bueso <davidl...@hp.com>
> > > ---
> > > Please note that nommu and unicore32 arch are *untested*.
> > >
> > > I also have a patch on top of this one that caches the most
> > > used vma, which adds another 8-10% hit rate gain, However,
> > > since it does add a counter to the vma structure and we have
> > > to do more logic in find_vma to keep track, I was hesitant about
> > > the overhead. If folks are interested I can send that out as well.
> >
> > Would be interesting to see.
> >
> > Btw., roughly how many cycles/instructions do we save by increasing
> > the hit rate, in the typical case (for example during a kernel build)?
>
> Good point. The IPC from perf stat doesn't show any difference with or
> without the patch -- note that this is probably the least interesting
> one as we already get a really nice hit rate with the single mmap_cache.
> I have yet to try it on the other workloads.
I'd be surprised if this was measureable via perf stat, unless you do the
measurement in a really, really careful way - and even then it's easy to
make a hard to detect mistake larger in magnitude than the measured effect
...
An easier and more reliable measurement would be to stick 2-3 get_cycles()
calls into the affected code and save the pure timestamps into
task.se.statistics, and extract the timestamps via /proc/sched_debug by
adding matching seq_printf()s to kernel/sched/debug.c. (You can clear the
statistics by echoing 0 to /proc/<PID>/sched_debug, see
proc_sched_set_task().)
That measurement is still subject to skid and other artifacts but
hopefully the effect is larger than cycles fuzz - and we are interested in
a ballpark figure in any case.
Thanks,
Ingo
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