Commit Graph

62 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Christoph Lameter 6cb8f91320 Slab allocators: consistent ZERO_SIZE_PTR support and NULL result semantics
Define ZERO_OR_NULL_PTR macro to be able to remove the checks from the
allocators.  Move ZERO_SIZE_PTR related stuff into slab.h.

Make ZERO_SIZE_PTR work for all slab allocators and get rid of the
WARN_ON_ONCE(size == 0) that is still remaining in SLAB.

Make slub return NULL like the other allocators if a too large memory segment
is requested via __kmalloc.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-17 10:23:01 -07:00
Paul Mundt 6193a2ff18 slob: initial NUMA support
This adds preliminary NUMA support to SLOB, primarily aimed at systems with
small nodes (tested all the way down to a 128kB SRAM block), whether
asymmetric or otherwise.

We follow the same conventions as SLAB/SLUB, preferring current node
placement for new pages, or with explicit placement, if a node has been
specified.  Presently on UP NUMA this has the side-effect of preferring
node#0 allocations (since numa_node_id() == 0, though this could be
reworked if we could hand off a pfn to determine node placement), so
single-CPU NUMA systems will want to place smaller nodes further out in
terms of node id.  Once a page has been bound to a node (via explicit node
id typing), we only do block allocations from partial free pages that have
a matching node id in the page flags.

The current implementation does have some scalability problems, in that all
partial free pages are tracked in the global freelist (with contention due
to the single spinlock).  However, these are things that are being reworked
for SMP scalability first, while things like per-node freelists can easily
be built on top of this sort of functionality once it's been added.

More background can be found in:

	http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=118117916022379&w=2
	http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=118170446306199&w=2
	http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=118187859420048&w=2

and subsequent threads.

Acked-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Acked-by: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-07-16 09:05:36 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 4b356be019 SLUB: minimum alignment fixes
If ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is set to a value greater than 8 (SLUBs smallest
kmalloc cache) then SLUB may generate duplicate slabs in sysfs (yes again)
because the object size is padded to reach ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN.  Thus the
size of the small slabs is all the same.

No arch sets ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN larger than 8 though except mips which
for some reason wants a 128 byte alignment.

This patch increases the size of the smallest cache if
ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is greater than 8.  In that case more and more of the
smallest caches are disabled.

If we do that then the count of the active general caches that is displayed
on boot is not correct anymore since we may skip elements of the kmalloc
array.  So count them separately.

This approach was tested by Havard yesterday.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@atmel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-06-16 13:16:16 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 272c1d21d6 SLUB: return ZERO_SIZE_PTR for kmalloc(0)
Instead of returning the smallest available object return ZERO_SIZE_PTR.

A ZERO_SIZE_PTR can be legitimately used as an object pointer as long as it
is not deferenced.  The dereference of ZERO_SIZE_PTR causes a distinctive
fault.  kfree can handle a ZERO_SIZE_PTR in the same way as NULL.

This enables functions to use zero sized object. e.g. n = number of objects.

	objects = kmalloc(n * sizeof(object));

	for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
		objects[i].x = y;

	kfree(objects);

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-06-08 17:23:33 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 0aa817f078 Slab allocators: define common size limitations
Currently we have a maze of configuration variables that determine the
maximum slab size.  Worst of all it seems to vary between SLAB and SLUB.

So define a common maximum size for kmalloc.  For conveniences sake we use
the maximum size ever supported which is 32 MB.  We limit the maximum size
to a lower limit if MAX_ORDER does not allow such large allocations.

For many architectures this patch will have the effect of adding large
kmalloc sizes.  x86_64 adds 5 new kmalloc sizes.  So a small amount of
memory will be needed for these caches (contemporary SLAB has dynamically
sizeable node and cpu structure so the waste is less than in the past)

Most architectures will then be able to allocate object with sizes up to
MAX_ORDER.  We have had repeated breakage (in fact whenever we doubled the
number of supported processors) on IA64 because one or the other struct
grew beyond what the slab allocators supported.  This will avoid future
issues and f.e.  avoid fixes for 2k and 4k cpu support.

CONFIG_LARGE_ALLOCS is no longer necessary so drop it.

It fixes sparc64 with SLAB.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-17 05:23:04 -07:00
Andrew Morton ade3aff25f slub: fix handling of oversized slabs
I'm getting zillions of undefined references to __kmalloc_size_too_large on
alpha.  For some reason alpha is building out-of-line copies of kmalloc_slab()
into lots of compilation units.

It turns out that gcc just isn't smart enough to work out that
__builtin_contant_p(size)==true implies that __builtin_contant_p(index)==true.

So let's give it a bit of help.

Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-17 05:23:03 -07:00
Christoph Lameter c59def9f22 Slab allocators: Drop support for destructors
There is no user of destructors left.  There is no reason why we should keep
checking for destructors calls in the slab allocators.

The RFC for this patch was discussed at
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=117882364330705&w=2

Destructors were mainly used for list management which required them to take a
spinlock.  Taking a spinlock in a destructor is a bit risky since the slab
allocators may run the destructors anytime they decide a slab is no longer
needed.

Patch drops destructor support.  Any attempt to use a destructor will BUG().

Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Acked-by: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-17 05:23:03 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 1abd727ed7 SLUB: It is legit to allocate a slab of the maximum permitted size
Sorry I screwed up the comparison. It is only an error if we attempt
to allocate a slab larger than the maximum allowed size.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-16 21:19:15 -07:00
Christoph Lameter cfbf07f2a8 SLUB: CONFIG_LARGE_ALLOCS must consider MAX_ORDER limit
Take MAX_ORDER into consideration when determining KMALLOC_SHIFT_HIGH.
Otherwise we may run into a situation where we attempt to create general
slabs larger than MAX_ORDER.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-15 08:54:01 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 643b113849 slub: enable tracking of full slabs
If slab tracking is on then build a list of full slabs so that we can verify
the integrity of all slabs and are also able to built list of alloc/free
callers.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07 12:12:54 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 614410d589 SLUB: allocate smallest object size if the user asks for 0 bytes
Makes SLUB behave like SLAB in this area to avoid issues....

Throw a stack dump to alert people.

At some point the behavior should be switched back.  NULL is no memory as
far as I can tell and if the use asked for 0 bytes then he need to get no
memory.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07 12:12:53 -07:00
Christoph Lameter 81819f0fc8 SLUB core
This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the
existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns
with the existing implementation.

A. Management of object queues

   A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object
   queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for
   each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of
   queueing them up.

B. Storage overhead of object queues

   SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even
   has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each
   node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of
   objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our
   systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up
   for storing references to objects for those queues  This does not include
   the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole
   memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues.

C. SLAB meta data overhead

   SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data
   cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps
   all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally
   aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte
   boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over.
   SLAB cannot do this.

D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper

   SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems
   the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that
   operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list
   of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues
   during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs.

E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support

   SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that
   allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that
   situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of
   policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is
   certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to
   memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from
   one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects
   from one node and then will switch to the next.

F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists

   SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large
   number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can
   only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global
   pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to
   decrease fragmentation.

G. Tunables

   SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can
   manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still
   requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global
   parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab
   order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the
   less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the
   better SLUB will be scaling.

G. Slab merging

   We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those
   on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This
   leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can
   be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease
   slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled
   up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying
   slub_nomerge on boot up.

   Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel
   because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt
   differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those.

H. Diagnostics

   The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a
   recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that
   is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths).
   SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option.
   Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of
   slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running
   with the usual performance and it is much more likely that
   race conditions can be reproduced.

I. Resiliency

   If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting
   common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the
   system to continue.

J. Tracing

   Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option
   during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache
   and dump the object contents on free.

K. On demand DMA cache creation.

   Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with
   __GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed.
   For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is
   completely eliminated.

L. Performance increase

   Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the
   range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the
   underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate
   larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub
   performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may
   enable further performance increases.

Tested on:
i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator

SLUB Boot options

slub_nomerge		Disable merging of slabs
slub_min_order=x	Require a minimum order for slab caches. This
			increases the managed chunk size and therefore
			reduces meta data and locking overhead.
slub_min_objects=x	Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8.
slub_max_order=x	Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified.
slub_debug		Enable all diagnostics for all caches
slub_debug=<options>	Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=<o>,<cache>	Enable selective options for a certain set of
			caches

Available Debug options
F		Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency
R		Red zoning
P		Object / padding poisoning
U		Track last free / alloc
T		Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs).

To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab
allocator.

[hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-07 12:12:53 -07:00