This reverts commit a8282608c8.
The commit references the original intended semantic for MADV_HUGEPAGE
which has subsequently taken on three unique purposes:
- enables or disables thp for a range of memory depending on the system's
config (is thp "enabled" set to "always" or "madvise"),
- determines the synchronous compaction behavior for thp allocations at
fault (is thp "defrag" set to "always", "defer+madvise", or "madvise"),
and
- reverts a previous MADV_NOHUGEPAGE (there is no madvise mode to only
clear previous hugepage advice).
These are the three purposes that currently exist in 5.2 and over the
past several years that userspace has been written around. Adding a
NUMA locality preference adds a fourth dimension to an already conflated
advice mode.
Based on the semantic that MADV_HUGEPAGE has provided over the past
several years, there exist workloads that use the tunable based on these
principles: specifically that the allocation should attempt to
defragment a local node before falling back. It is agreed that remote
hugepages typically (but not always) have a better access latency than
remote native pages, although on Naples this is at parity for
intersocket.
The revert commit that this patch reverts allows hugepage allocation to
immediately allocate remotely when local memory is fragmented. This is
contrary to the semantic of MADV_HUGEPAGE over the past several years:
that is, memory compaction should be attempted locally before falling
back.
The performance degradation of remote hugepages over local hugepages on
Rome, for example, is 53.5% increased access latency. For this reason,
the goal is to revert back to the 5.2 and previous behavior that would
attempt local defragmentation before falling back. With the patch that
is reverted by this patch, we see performance degradations at the tail
because the allocator happily allocates the remote hugepage rather than
even attempting to make a local hugepage available.
zone_reclaim_mode is not a solution to this problem since it does not
only impact hugepage allocations but rather changes the memory
allocation strategy for *all* page allocations.
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Stefan Priebe - Profihost AG <s.priebe@profihost.ag>
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
