149 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
149 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
Page migration
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--------------
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Page migration allows the moving of the physical location of pages between
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nodes in a numa system while the process is running. This means that the
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virtual addresses that the process sees do not change. However, the
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system rearranges the physical location of those pages.
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The main intend of page migration is to reduce the latency of memory access
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by moving pages near to the processor where the process accessing that memory
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is running.
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Page migration allows a process to manually relocate the node on which its
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pages are located through the MF_MOVE and MF_MOVE_ALL options while setting
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a new memory policy via mbind(). The pages of process can also be relocated
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from another process using the sys_migrate_pages() function call. The
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migrate_pages function call takes two sets of nodes and moves pages of a
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process that are located on the from nodes to the destination nodes.
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Page migration functions are provided by the numactl package by Andi Kleen
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(a version later than 0.9.3 is required. Get it from
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ftp://oss.sgi.com/www/projects/libnuma/download/). numactl provides libnuma
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which provides an interface similar to other numa functionality for page
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migration. cat /proc/<pid>/numa_maps allows an easy review of where the
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pages of a process are located. See also the numa_maps documentation in the
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proc(5) man page.
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Manual migration is useful if for example the scheduler has relocated
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a process to a processor on a distant node. A batch scheduler or an
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administrator may detect the situation and move the pages of the process
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nearer to the new processor. The kernel itself does only provide
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manual page migration support. Automatic page migration may be implemented
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through user space processes that move pages. A special function call
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"move_pages" allows the moving of individual pages within a process.
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A NUMA profiler may f.e. obtain a log showing frequent off node
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accesses and may use the result to move pages to more advantageous
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locations.
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Larger installations usually partition the system using cpusets into
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sections of nodes. Paul Jackson has equipped cpusets with the ability to
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move pages when a task is moved to another cpuset (See ../cpusets.txt).
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Cpusets allows the automation of process locality. If a task is moved to
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a new cpuset then also all its pages are moved with it so that the
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performance of the process does not sink dramatically. Also the pages
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of processes in a cpuset are moved if the allowed memory nodes of a
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cpuset are changed.
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Page migration allows the preservation of the relative location of pages
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within a group of nodes for all migration techniques which will preserve a
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particular memory allocation pattern generated even after migrating a
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process. This is necessary in order to preserve the memory latencies.
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Processes will run with similar performance after migration.
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Page migration occurs in several steps. First a high level
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description for those trying to use migrate_pages() from the kernel
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(for userspace usage see the Andi Kleen's numactl package mentioned above)
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and then a low level description of how the low level details work.
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A. In kernel use of migrate_pages()
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-----------------------------------
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1. Remove pages from the LRU.
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Lists of pages to be migrated are generated by scanning over
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pages and moving them into lists. This is done by
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calling isolate_lru_page().
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Calling isolate_lru_page increases the references to the page
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so that it cannot vanish while the page migration occurs.
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It also prevents the swapper or other scans to encounter
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the page.
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2. We need to have a function of type new_page_t that can be
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passed to migrate_pages(). This function should figure out
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how to allocate the correct new page given the old page.
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3. The migrate_pages() function is called which attempts
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to do the migration. It will call the function to allocate
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the new page for each page that is considered for
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moving.
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B. How migrate_pages() works
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----------------------------
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migrate_pages() does several passes over its list of pages. A page is moved
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if all references to a page are removable at the time. The page has
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already been removed from the LRU via isolate_lru_page() and the refcount
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is increased so that the page cannot be freed while page migration occurs.
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Steps:
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1. Lock the page to be migrated
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2. Insure that writeback is complete.
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3. Prep the new page that we want to move to. It is locked
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and set to not being uptodate so that all accesses to the new
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page immediately lock while the move is in progress.
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4. The new page is prepped with some settings from the old page so that
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accesses to the new page will discover a page with the correct settings.
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5. All the page table references to the page are converted
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to migration entries or dropped (nonlinear vmas).
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This decrease the mapcount of a page. If the resulting
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mapcount is not zero then we do not migrate the page.
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All user space processes that attempt to access the page
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will now wait on the page lock.
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6. The radix tree lock is taken. This will cause all processes trying
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to access the page via the mapping to block on the radix tree spinlock.
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7. The refcount of the page is examined and we back out if references remain
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otherwise we know that we are the only one referencing this page.
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8. The radix tree is checked and if it does not contain the pointer to this
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page then we back out because someone else modified the radix tree.
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9. The radix tree is changed to point to the new page.
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10. The reference count of the old page is dropped because the radix tree
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reference is gone. A reference to the new page is established because
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the new page is referenced to by the radix tree.
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11. The radix tree lock is dropped. With that lookups in the mapping
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become possible again. Processes will move from spinning on the tree_lock
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to sleeping on the locked new page.
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12. The page contents are copied to the new page.
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13. The remaining page flags are copied to the new page.
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14. The old page flags are cleared to indicate that the page does
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not provide any information anymore.
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15. Queued up writeback on the new page is triggered.
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16. If migration entries were page then replace them with real ptes. Doing
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so will enable access for user space processes not already waiting for
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the page lock.
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19. The page locks are dropped from the old and new page.
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Processes waiting on the page lock will redo their page faults
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and will reach the new page.
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20. The new page is moved to the LRU and can be scanned by the swapper
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etc again.
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Christoph Lameter, May 8, 2006.
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