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SubjectRe: SMP performance problem in 2.4 (was: Athlon spinlock performance)
Date
Hi Scott

On Sun, 3 Aug 2003 06:03, Scott L. Burson wrote:
> In one approximately 60-second period with the problematic workload
> running, `try_to_free_pages' was called 511 times. It made 2597 calls to
> `shrink_caches', which made 2592 calls to `shrink_cache' (i.e. it was very
> rare for `kmem_cache_reap' to release enough pages itself). The main loop
> of `shrink_cache' was executed -- brace yourselves -- 189 million times!
> During that time it called `page_cache_release' on only 31265 pages.

I noticed a curly section of the vm code when I was playing around with some
hacks that are in the -ck kernel and this section might be helpful as it
wasn't a hack so much as a fix in mm/vmscan.c around line 600. The problem
is when the priority drops to 1 it should do the most cache reaping but
instead bypasses some of it.
You could try this modification and see if it helps.

This isn't a real patch but you should get the idea.

Con

nr_pages -= kmem_cache_reap(gfp_mask);
- if (nr_pages <= 0)
- return 0;
+ if (nr_pages < 1)
+ goto shrinkcheck;

nr_pages = chunk_size;
/* try to keep the active list 2/3 of the size of the cache */
ratio = (unsigned long) nr_pages * nr_active_pages / ((nr_inactive_pages + 1) * 2);
refill_inactive(ratio);

nr_pages = shrink_cache(nr_pages, classzone, gfp_mask, priority);
- if (nr_pages <= 0)
- return 0;
+ /*
+ * Will return if nr_pages have been freed unless the
+ * priority managed to reach 1. If the vm is under this much
+ * pressure then shrink the d/i/dqcaches regardless. CK 2003
+ */
+shrinkcheck:
+ if (nr_pages < 1){
+ if (priority > 1)
+ return 0;
+ else
+ nr_pages = 0;
+ }
+

shrink_dcache_memory(priority, gfp_mask);
shrink_icache_memory(priority, gfp_mask);

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