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mm: relocate 'write_protect_seq' in struct mm_struct
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0day robot reported a 9.2% regression for will-it-scale mmap1 test
case[1], caused by commit 57efa1f ("mm/gup: prevent gup_fast from
racing with COW during fork").

Further debug shows the regression is due to that commit changes the
offset of hot fields 'mmap_lock' inside structure 'mm_struct', thus some
cache alignment changes.

From the perf data, the contention for 'mmap_lock' is very severe and
takes around 95% cpu cycles, and it is a rw_semaphore

        struct rw_semaphore {
                atomic_long_t count;	/* 8 bytes */
                atomic_long_t owner;	/* 8 bytes */
                struct optimistic_spin_queue osq; /* spinner MCS lock */
                ...

Before commit 57efa1f adds the 'write_protect_seq', it happens to
have a very optimal cache alignment layout, as Linus explained:

 "and before the addition of the 'write_protect_seq' field, the
  mmap_sem was at offset 120 in 'struct mm_struct'.

  Which meant that count and owner were in two different cachelines,
  and then when you have contention and spend time in
  rwsem_down_write_slowpath(), this is probably *exactly* the kind
  of layout you want.

  Because first the rwsem_write_trylock() will do a cmpxchg on the
  first cacheline (for the optimistic fast-path), and then in the
  case of contention, rwsem_down_write_slowpath() will just access
  the second cacheline.

  Which is probably just optimal for a load that spends a lot of
  time contended - new waiters touch that first cacheline, and then
  they queue themselves up on the second cacheline."

After the commit, the rw_semaphore is at offset 128, which means the
'count' and 'owner' fields are now in the same cacheline, and causes
more cache bouncing.

Currently there are 3 "#ifdef CONFIG_XXX" before 'mmap_lock' which will
affect its offset:

  CONFIG_MMU
  CONFIG_MEMBARRIER
  CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_COMPAT_MMAP_BASES

The layout above is on 64 bits system with 0day's default kernel config
(similar to RHEL-8.3's config), in which all these 3 options are 'y'.
And the layout can vary with different kernel configs.

Relayouting a structure is usually a double-edged sword, as sometimes it
can helps one case, but hurt other cases.  For this case, one solution
is, as the newly added 'write_protect_seq' is a 4 bytes long seqcount_t
(when CONFIG_DEBUG_LOCK_ALLOC=n), placing it into an existing 4 bytes
hole in 'mm_struct' will not change other fields' alignment, while
restoring the regression.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210525031636.GB7744@xsang-OptiPlex-9020/ [1]
Reported-by: kernel test robot <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Feng Tang <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: John Hubbard <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Jason Gunthorpe <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Xu <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
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ftang1 authored and torvalds committed Jun 12, 2021
1 parent 43cb5d4 commit 2e30254
Showing 1 changed file with 20 additions and 7 deletions.
27 changes: 20 additions & 7 deletions include/linux/mm_types.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -445,13 +445,6 @@ struct mm_struct {
*/
atomic_t has_pinned;

/**
* @write_protect_seq: Locked when any thread is write
* protecting pages mapped by this mm to enforce a later COW,
* for instance during page table copying for fork().
*/
seqcount_t write_protect_seq;

#ifdef CONFIG_MMU
atomic_long_t pgtables_bytes; /* PTE page table pages */
#endif
Expand All @@ -460,6 +453,18 @@ struct mm_struct {
spinlock_t page_table_lock; /* Protects page tables and some
* counters
*/
/*
* With some kernel config, the current mmap_lock's offset
* inside 'mm_struct' is at 0x120, which is very optimal, as
* its two hot fields 'count' and 'owner' sit in 2 different
* cachelines, and when mmap_lock is highly contended, both
* of the 2 fields will be accessed frequently, current layout
* will help to reduce cache bouncing.
*
* So please be careful with adding new fields before
* mmap_lock, which can easily push the 2 fields into one
* cacheline.
*/
struct rw_semaphore mmap_lock;

struct list_head mmlist; /* List of maybe swapped mm's. These
Expand All @@ -480,7 +485,15 @@ struct mm_struct {
unsigned long stack_vm; /* VM_STACK */
unsigned long def_flags;

/**
* @write_protect_seq: Locked when any thread is write
* protecting pages mapped by this mm to enforce a later COW,
* for instance during page table copying for fork().
*/
seqcount_t write_protect_seq;

spinlock_t arg_lock; /* protect the below fields */

unsigned long start_code, end_code, start_data, end_data;
unsigned long start_brk, brk, start_stack;
unsigned long arg_start, arg_end, env_start, env_end;
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