linux-toradex.git/include/linux/slub_def.h, branch v2.6.26-rc1

slub: Fallback to minimal order during slab page allocation

2008-04-27T15:28:18+00:00

If any higher order allocation fails then fall back the smallest order
necessary to contain at least one object. This enables fallback for all
allocations to order 0 pages. The fallback will waste more memory (objects
will not fit neatly) and the fallback slabs will be not as efficient as larger
slabs since they contain less objects.

Note that SLAB also depends on order 1 allocations for some slabs that waste
too much memory if forced into PAGE_SIZE'd page. SLUB now can now deal with
failing order 1 allocs which SLAB cannot do.

Add a new field min that will contain the objects for the smallest possible order
for a slab cache.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg

slub: Update statistics handling for variable order slabs

2008-04-27T15:28:17+00:00

Change the statistics to consider that slabs of the same slabcache
can have different number of objects in them since they may be of
different order.

Provide a new sysfs field

	total_objects

which shows the total objects that the allocated slabs of a slabcache
could hold.

Add a max field that holds the largest slab order that was ever used
for a slab cache.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg

slub: Add kmem_cache_order_objects struct

2008-04-27T15:28:17+00:00

Pack the order and the number of objects into a single word.
This saves some memory in the kmem_cache_structure and more importantly
allows us to fetch both values atomically.

Later the slab orders become runtime configurable and we need to fetch these
two items together in order to properly allocate a slab and initialize its
objects.

Fix the race by fetching the order and the number of objects in one word.

[penberg@cs.helsinki.fi: fix memset() page order in new_slab()]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg

slub: No need for per node slab counters if !SLUB_DEBUG

2008-04-14T15:53:02+00:00

The per node counters are used mainly for showing data through the sysfs API.
If that API is not compiled in then there is no point in keeping track of this
data. Disable counters for the number of slabs and the number of total slabs
if !SLUB_DEBUG. Incrementing the per node counters is also accessing a
potentially contended cacheline so this could actually be a performance
benefit to embedded systems.

SLABINFO support is also affected. It now must depends on SLUB_DEBUG (which
is on by default).

Patch also avoids a check for a NULL kmem_cache_node pointer in new_slab()
if the system is not compiled with NUMA support.

[penberg@cs.helsinki.fi: fix oops and move ->nr_slabs into CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG]
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg

slub: Fix up comments

2008-03-03T20:22:32+00:00

Provide comments and fix up various spelling / style issues.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter

slub: Support 4k kmallocs again to compensate for page allocator slowness

2008-02-14T23:30:02+00:00

Currently we hand off PAGE_SIZEd kmallocs to the page allocator in the
mistaken belief that the page allocator can handle these allocations
effectively. However, measurements indicate a minimum slowdown by the
factor of 8 (and that is only SMP, NUMA is much worse) vs the slub fastpath
which causes regressions in tbench.

Increase the number of kmalloc caches by one so that we again handle 4k
kmallocs directly from slub. 4k page buffering for the page allocator
will be performed by slub like done by slab.

At some point the page allocator fastpath should be fixed. A lot of the kernel
would benefit from a faster ability to allocate a single page. If that is
done then the 4k allocs may again be forwarded to the page allocator and this
patch could be reverted.

Reviewed-by: Pekka Enberg 
Acked-by: Mel Gorman 
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter

slub: Determine gfpflags once and not every time a slab is allocated

2008-02-14T23:30:01+00:00

Currently we determine the gfp flags to pass to the page allocator
each time a slab is being allocated.

Determine the bits to be set at the time the slab is created. Store
in a new allocflags field and add the flags in allocate_slab().

Acked-by: Mel Gorman 
Reviewed-by: Pekka Enberg 
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter

slub: kmalloc page allocator pass-through cleanup

2008-02-14T23:30:01+00:00

This adds a proper function for kmalloc page allocator pass-through. While it
simplifies any code that does slab tracing code a lot, I think it's a
worthwhile cleanup in itself.

Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg 
Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter

SLUB: Support for performance statistics

2008-02-08T01:47:41+00:00

The statistics provided here allow the monitoring of allocator behavior but
at the cost of some (minimal) loss of performance. Counters are placed in
SLUB's per cpu data structure. The per cpu structure may be extended by the
statistics to grow larger than one cacheline which will increase the cache
footprint of SLUB.

There is a compile option to enable/disable the inclusion of the runtime
statistics and its off by default.

The slabinfo tool is enhanced to support these statistics via two options:

-D 	Switches the line of information displayed for a slab from size
	mode to activity mode.

-A	Sorts the slabs displayed by activity. This allows the display of
	the slabs most important to the performance of a certain load.

-r	Report option will report detailed statistics on

Example (tbench load):

slabinfo -AD		->Shows the most active slabs

Name                   Objects    Alloc     Free   %Fast
skbuff_fclone_cache         33 111953835 111953835  99  99
:0000192                  2666  5283688  5281047  99  99
:0001024                   849  5247230  5246389  83  83
vm_area_struct            1349   119642   118355  91  22
:0004096                    15    66753    66751  98  98
:0000064                  2067    25297    23383  98  78
dentry                   10259    28635    18464  91  45
:0000080                 11004    18950     8089  98  98
:0000096                  1703    12358    10784  99  98
:0000128                   762    10582     9875  94  18
:0000512                   184     9807     9647  95  81
:0002048                   479     9669     9195  83  65
anon_vma                   777     9461     9002  99  71
kmalloc-8                 6492     9981     5624  99  97
:0000768                   258     7174     6931  58  15

So the skbuff_fclone_cache is of highest importance for the tbench load.
Pretty high load on the 192 sized slab. Look for the aliases

slabinfo -a | grep 000192
:0000192     <- xfs_btree_cur filp kmalloc-192 uid_cache tw_sock_TCP
	request_sock_TCPv6 tw_sock_TCPv6 skbuff_head_cache xfs_ili

Likely skbuff_head_cache.


Looking into the statistics of the skbuff_fclone_cache is possible through

slabinfo skbuff_fclone_cache	->-r option implied if cache name is mentioned


.... Usual output ...

Slab Perf Counter       Alloc     Free %Al %Fr
--------------------------------------------------
Fastpath             111953360 111946981  99  99
Slowpath                 1044     7423   0   0
Page Alloc                272      264   0   0
Add partial                25      325   0   0
Remove partial             86      264   0   0
RemoteObj/SlabFrozen      350     4832   0   0
Total                111954404 111954404

Flushes       49 Refill        0
Deactivate Full=325(92%) Empty=0(0%) ToHead=24(6%) ToTail=1(0%)

Looks good because the fastpath is overwhelmingly taken.


skbuff_head_cache:

Slab Perf Counter       Alloc     Free %Al %Fr
--------------------------------------------------
Fastpath              5297262  5259882  99  99
Slowpath                 4477    39586   0   0
Page Alloc                937      824   0   0
Add partial                 0     2515   0   0
Remove partial           1691      824   0   0
RemoteObj/SlabFrozen     2621     9684   0   0
Total                 5301739  5299468

Deactivate Full=2620(100%) Empty=0(0%) ToHead=0(0%) ToTail=0(0%)


Descriptions of the output:

Total:		The total number of allocation and frees that occurred for a
		slab

Fastpath:	The number of allocations/frees that used the fastpath.

Slowpath:	Other allocations

Page Alloc:	Number of calls to the page allocator as a result of slowpath
		processing

Add Partial:	Number of slabs added to the partial list through free or
		alloc (occurs during cpuslab flushes)

Remove Partial:	Number of slabs removed from the partial list as a result of
		allocations retrieving a partial slab or by a free freeing
		the last object of a slab.

RemoteObj/Froz:	How many times were remotely freed object encountered when a
		slab was about to be deactivated. Frozen: How many times was
		free able to skip list processing because the slab was in use
		as the cpuslab of another processor.

Flushes:	Number of times the cpuslab was flushed on request
		(kmem_cache_shrink, may result from races in __slab_alloc)

Refill:		Number of times we were able to refill the cpuslab from
		remotely freed objects for the same slab.

Deactivate:	Statistics how slabs were deactivated. Shows how they were
		put onto the partial list.

In general fastpath is very good. Slowpath without partial list processing is
also desirable. Any touching of partial list uses node specific locks which
may potentially cause list lock contention.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter

Explain kmem_cache_cpu fields

2008-02-04T18:56:03+00:00

Add some comments explaining the fields of the kmem_cache_cpu structure.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton