Re: [PATCH 1/4] memcg: do not try to drain per-cpu caches without pages

[Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>]

On Thu 21-07-11 19:12:50, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:38:00 +0200
> Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz> wrote:
> 
> > drain_all_stock_async tries to optimize a work to be done on the work
> > queue by excluding any work for the current CPU because it assumes that
> > the context we are called from already tried to charge from that cache
> > and it's failed so it must be empty already.
> > While the assumption is correct we can do it by checking the current
> > number of pages in the cache. This will also reduce a work on other CPUs
> > with an empty stock.
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
> 
> 
> At the first look, when a charge against TransParentHugepage() goes
> into the reclaim routine, stock->nr_pages != 0 and this will
> call additional kworker.

True. We will drain a charge which could be used by other allocations
in the meantime so we have a good chance to reclaim less. But how big
problem is that?
I mean I can add a new parameter that would force checking the current
cpu but it doesn't look nice. I cannot add that condition
unconditionally because the code will be shared with the sync path in
the next patch and that one needs to drain _all_ cpus.

What would you suggest?
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs
SUSE LINUX s.r.o.
Lihovarska 1060/12
190 00 Praha 9    
Czech Republic