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![Christoph Lameter](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
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>
80 lines
2.4 KiB
C
80 lines
2.4 KiB
C
#ifndef _LINUX_MM_TYPES_H
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#define _LINUX_MM_TYPES_H
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#include <linux/types.h>
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#include <linux/threads.h>
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#include <linux/list.h>
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#include <linux/spinlock.h>
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struct address_space;
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/*
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* Each physical page in the system has a struct page associated with
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* it to keep track of whatever it is we are using the page for at the
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* moment. Note that we have no way to track which tasks are using
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* a page, though if it is a pagecache page, rmap structures can tell us
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* who is mapping it.
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*/
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struct page {
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unsigned long flags; /* Atomic flags, some possibly
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* updated asynchronously */
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atomic_t _count; /* Usage count, see below. */
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union {
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atomic_t _mapcount; /* Count of ptes mapped in mms,
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* to show when page is mapped
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* & limit reverse map searches.
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*/
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struct { /* SLUB uses */
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short unsigned int inuse;
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short unsigned int offset;
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};
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};
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union {
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struct {
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unsigned long private; /* Mapping-private opaque data:
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* usually used for buffer_heads
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* if PagePrivate set; used for
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* swp_entry_t if PageSwapCache;
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* indicates order in the buddy
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* system if PG_buddy is set.
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*/
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struct address_space *mapping; /* If low bit clear, points to
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* inode address_space, or NULL.
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* If page mapped as anonymous
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* memory, low bit is set, and
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* it points to anon_vma object:
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* see PAGE_MAPPING_ANON below.
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*/
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};
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#if NR_CPUS >= CONFIG_SPLIT_PTLOCK_CPUS
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spinlock_t ptl;
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#endif
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struct { /* SLUB uses */
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struct page *first_page; /* Compound pages */
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struct kmem_cache *slab; /* Pointer to slab */
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};
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};
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union {
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pgoff_t index; /* Our offset within mapping. */
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void *freelist; /* SLUB: pointer to free object */
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};
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struct list_head lru; /* Pageout list, eg. active_list
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* protected by zone->lru_lock !
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*/
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/*
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* On machines where all RAM is mapped into kernel address space,
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* we can simply calculate the virtual address. On machines with
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* highmem some memory is mapped into kernel virtual memory
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* dynamically, so we need a place to store that address.
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* Note that this field could be 16 bits on x86 ... ;)
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*
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* Architectures with slow multiplication can define
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* WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL in asm/page.h
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*/
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#if defined(WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL)
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void *virtual; /* Kernel virtual address (NULL if
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not kmapped, ie. highmem) */
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#endif /* WANT_PAGE_VIRTUAL */
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};
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#endif /* _LINUX_MM_TYPES_H */
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