[v4,1/4] mm/ksm: add "smart" page scanning mode

Commit Message

Stefan Roesch Sept. 27, 2023, 4:22 p.m. UTC

This change adds a "smart" page scanning mode for KSM. So far all the
candidate pages are continuously scanned to find candidates for
de-duplication. There are a considerably number of pages that cannot be
de-duplicated. This is costly in terms of CPU. By using smart scanning
considerable CPU savings can be achieved.

This change takes the history of scanning pages into account and skips
the page scanning of certain pages for a while if de-deduplication for
this page has not been successful in the past.

To do this it introduces two new fields in the ksm_rmap_item structure:
age and remaining_skips. age, is the KSM age and remaining_skips
determines how often scanning of this page is skipped. The age field is
incremented each time the page is scanned and the page cannot be de-
duplicated. age updated is capped at U8_MAX.

How often a page is skipped is dependent how often de-duplication has
been tried so far and the number of skips is currently limited to 8.
This value has shown to be effective with different workloads.

The feature is enabled by default and can be disabled with the new
smart_scan knob.

The feature has shown to be very effective: upt to 25% of the page scans
can be eliminated; the pages_to_scan rate can be reduced by 40 - 50% and
a similar de-duplication rate can be maintained.

Signed-off-by: Stefan Roesch <[e-mail]>
Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand <[e-mail]>
---
 mm/ksm.c | 103 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 103 insertions(+)

Patch

diff --git a/mm/ksm.c b/mm/ksm.c
index 981af9c72e7a..c0a2e7759365 100644
--- a/mm/ksm.c
+++ b/mm/ksm.c
@@ -56,6 +56,8 @@ 
 #define DO_NUMA(x)	do { } while (0)
 #endif
 
+typedef u8 rmap_age_t;
+
 /**
  * DOC: Overview
  *
@@ -193,6 +195,8 @@  struct ksm_stable_node {
  * @node: rb node of this rmap_item in the unstable tree
  * @head: pointer to stable_node heading this list in the stable tree
  * @hlist: link into hlist of rmap_items hanging off that stable_node
+ * @age: number of scan iterations since creation
+ * @remaining_skips: how many scans to skip
  */
 struct ksm_rmap_item {
 	struct ksm_rmap_item *rmap_list;
@@ -205,6 +209,8 @@  struct ksm_rmap_item {
 	struct mm_struct *mm;
 	unsigned long address;		/* + low bits used for flags below */
 	unsigned int oldchecksum;	/* when unstable */
+	rmap_age_t age;
+	rmap_age_t remaining_skips;
 	union {
 		struct rb_node node;	/* when node of unstable tree */
 		struct {		/* when listed from stable tree */
@@ -281,6 +287,9 @@  static unsigned int zero_checksum __read_mostly;
 /* Whether to merge empty (zeroed) pages with actual zero pages */
 static bool ksm_use_zero_pages __read_mostly;
 
+/* Skip pages that couldn't be de-duplicated previously  */
+static bool ksm_smart_scan = 1;
+
 /* The number of zero pages which is placed by KSM */
 unsigned long ksm_zero_pages;
 
@@ -2305,6 +2314,73 @@  static struct ksm_rmap_item *get_next_rmap_item(struct ksm_mm_slot *mm_slot,
 	return rmap_item;
 }
 
+/*
+ * Calculate skip age for the ksm page age. The age determines how often
+ * de-duplicating has already been tried unsuccessfully. If the age is
+ * smaller, the scanning of this page is skipped for less scans.
+ *
+ * @age: rmap_item age of page
+ */
+static unsigned int skip_age(rmap_age_t age)
+{
+	if (age <= 3)
+		return 1;
+	if (age <= 5)
+		return 2;
+	if (age <= 8)
+		return 4;
+
+	return 8;
+}
+
+/*
+ * Determines if a page should be skipped for the current scan.
+ *
+ * @page: page to check
+ * @rmap_item: associated rmap_item of page
+ */
+static bool should_skip_rmap_item(struct page *page,
+				  struct ksm_rmap_item *rmap_item)
+{
+	rmap_age_t age;
+
+	if (!ksm_smart_scan)
+		return false;
+
+	/*
+	 * Never skip pages that are already KSM; pages cmp_and_merge_page()
+	 * will essentially ignore them, but we still have to process them
+	 * properly.
+	 */
+	if (PageKsm(page))
+		return false;
+
+	age = rmap_item->age;
+	if (age != U8_MAX)
+		rmap_item->age++;
+
+	/*
+	 * Smaller ages are not skipped, they need to get a chance to go
+	 * through the different phases of the KSM merging.
+	 */
+	if (age < 3)
+		return false;
+
+	/*
+	 * Are we still allowed to skip? If not, then don't skip it
+	 * and determine how much more often we are allowed to skip next.
+	 */
+	if (!rmap_item->remaining_skips) {
+		rmap_item->remaining_skips = skip_age(age);
+		return false;
+	}
+
+	/* Skip this page */
+	rmap_item->remaining_skips--;
+	remove_rmap_item_from_tree(rmap_item);
+	return true;
+}
+
 static struct ksm_rmap_item *scan_get_next_rmap_item(struct page **page)
 {
 	struct mm_struct *mm;
@@ -2409,6 +2485,10 @@  static struct ksm_rmap_item *scan_get_next_rmap_item(struct page **page)
 				if (rmap_item) {
 					ksm_scan.rmap_list =
 							&rmap_item->rmap_list;
+
+					if (should_skip_rmap_item(*page, rmap_item))
+						goto next_page;
+
 					ksm_scan.address += PAGE_SIZE;
 				} else
 					put_page(*page);
@@ -3449,6 +3529,28 @@  static ssize_t full_scans_show(struct kobject *kobj,
 }
 KSM_ATTR_RO(full_scans);
 
+static ssize_t smart_scan_show(struct kobject *kobj,
+			       struct kobj_attribute *attr, char *buf)
+{
+	return sysfs_emit(buf, "%u\n", ksm_smart_scan);
+}
+
+static ssize_t smart_scan_store(struct kobject *kobj,
+				struct kobj_attribute *attr,
+				const char *buf, size_t count)
+{
+	int err;
+	bool value;
+
+	err = kstrtobool(buf, &value);
+	if (err)
+		return -EINVAL;
+
+	ksm_smart_scan = value;
+	return count;
+}
+KSM_ATTR(smart_scan);
+
 static struct attribute *ksm_attrs[] = {
 	&sleep_millisecs_attr.attr,
 	&pages_to_scan_attr.attr,
@@ -3469,6 +3571,7 @@  static struct attribute *ksm_attrs[] = {
 	&stable_node_chains_prune_millisecs_attr.attr,
 	&use_zero_pages_attr.attr,
 	&general_profit_attr.attr,
+	&smart_scan_attr.attr,
 	NULL,
 };