mm, page_alloc: restructure direct compaction handling in slowpath
The retry loop in __alloc_pages_slowpath is supposed to keep trying reclaim and compaction (and OOM), until either the allocation succeeds, or returns with failure. Success here is more probable when reclaim precedes compaction, as certain watermarks have to be met for compaction to even try, and more free pages increase the probability of compaction success. On the other hand, starting with light async compaction (if the watermarks allow it), can be more efficient, especially for smaller orders, if there's enough free memory which is just fragmented. Thus, the current code starts with compaction before reclaim, and to make sure that the last reclaim is always followed by a final compaction, there's another direct compaction call at the end of the loop. This makes the code hard to follow and adds some duplicated handling of migration_mode decisions. It's also somewhat inefficient that even if reclaim or compaction decides not to retry, the final compaction is still attempted. Some gfp flags combination also shortcut these retry decisions by "goto noretry;", making it even harder to follow. This patch attempts to restructure the code with only minimal functional changes. The call to the first compaction and THP-specific checks are now placed above the retry loop, and the "noretry" direct compaction is removed. The initial compaction is additionally restricted only to costly orders, as we can expect smaller orders to be held back by watermarks, and only larger orders to suffer primarily from fragmentation. This better matches the checks in reclaim's shrink_zones(). There are two other smaller functional changes. One is that the upgrade from async migration to light sync migration will always occur after the initial compaction. This is how it has been until recent patch "mm, oom: protect !costly allocations some more", which introduced upgrading the mode based on COMPACT_COMPLETE result, but kept the final compaction always upgraded, which made it even more special. It's better to return to the simpler handling for now, as migration modes will be further modified later in the series. The second change is that once both reclaim and compaction declare it's not worth to retry the reclaim/compact loop, there is no final compaction attempt. As argued above, this is intentional. If that final compaction were to succeed, it would be due to a wrong retry decision, or simply a race with somebody else freeing memory for us. The main outcome of this patch should be simpler code. Logically, the initial compaction without reclaim is the exceptional case to the reclaim/compaction scheme, but prior to the patch, it was the last loop iteration that was exceptional. Now the code matches the logic better. The change also enable the following patches. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160721073614.24395-5-vbabka@suse.czSigned-off-by:Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Acked-by:
Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> Acked-by:
Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net> Signed-off-by:
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by:
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Showing
Please register or sign in to comment