mm: do batched scans for mem_cgroup
authorWu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:03:11 +0000 (17:03 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:17:39 +0000 (07:17 -0700)
commitf86296317434b21585e229f6c49a33cb9ebab4d3
treed4fb05d4aee1a8e373ec053e7316dc9847b2c417
parent1a8670a29b5277cbe601f74ab63d2c5211fb3005
mm: do batched scans for mem_cgroup

For mem_cgroup, shrink_zone() may call shrink_list() with nr_to_scan=1, in
which case shrink_list() _still_ calls isolate_pages() with the much
larger SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX.  It effectively scales up the inactive list scan
rate by up to 32 times.

For example, with 16k inactive pages and DEF_PRIORITY=12, (16k >> 12)=4.
So when shrink_zone() expects to scan 4 pages in the active/inactive list,
the active list will be scanned 4 pages, while the inactive list will be
(over) scanned SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX=32 pages in effect.  And that could break
the balance between the two lists.

It can further impact the scan of anon active list, due to the anon
active/inactive ratio rebalance logic in balance_pgdat()/shrink_zone():

inactive anon list over scanned => inactive_anon_is_low() == TRUE
                                => shrink_active_list()
                                => active anon list over scanned

So the end result may be

- anon inactive  => over scanned
- anon active    => over scanned (maybe not as much)
- file inactive  => over scanned
- file active    => under scanned (relatively)

The accesses to nr_saved_scan are not lock protected and so not 100%
accurate, however we can tolerate small errors and the resulted small
imbalanced scan rates between zones.

Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>
Acked-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
include/linux/mmzone.h
mm/page_alloc.c
mm/vmscan.c