Re: [RFC PATCH v0 2/2] mm: sched: Batch-migrate misplaced pages

[Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>]

On 22 May 2025, at 13:21, David Hildenbrand wrote:

> On 22.05.25 18:38, Zi Yan wrote:
>> On 22 May 2025, at 12:26, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>
>>> On 22.05.25 18:24, Zi Yan wrote:
>>>> On 22 May 2025, at 12:11, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 21.05.25 10:02, Bharata B Rao wrote:
>>>>>> Currently the folios identified as misplaced by the NUMA
>>>>>> balancing sub-system are migrated one by one from the NUMA
>>>>>> hint fault handler as and when they are identified as
>>>>>> misplaced.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Instead of such singe folio migrations, batch them and
>>>>>> migrate them at once.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Identified misplaced folios are isolated and stored in
>>>>>> a per-task list. A new task_work is queued from task tick
>>>>>> handler to migrate them in batches. Migration is done
>>>>>> periodically or if pending number of isolated foios exceeds
>>>>>> a threshold.
>>>>>
>>>>> That means that these pages are effectively unmovable for other purposes (CMA, compaction, long-term pinning, whatever) until that list was drained.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bad.
>>>>
>>>> Probably we can mark these pages and when others want to migrate the page,
>>>> get_new_page() just looks at the page's target node and get a new page from
>>>> the target node.
>>>
>>> How do you envision that working when CMA needs to migrate this exact page to a different location?
>>>
>>> It cannot isolate it for migration because ... it's already isolated ... so it will give up.
>>>
>>> Marking might not be easy I assume ...
>>
>> I guess you mean we do not have any extra bit to indicate this page is isolated,
>> but it can be migrated. My point is that if this page is going to be migrated
>> due to other reasons, like CMA, compaction, why not migrate it to the target
>> node instead of moving it around within the same node.
>
> I think we'd have to identify that
>
> a) This page is isolate for migration (could be isolated for other
>    reasons)
>
> b) The one responsible for the isolation is numa code (could be someone
>    else)
>
> c) We're allowed to grab that page from that list (IOW sync against
>    others, and especially also against), to essentially "steal" the
>    isolated page.

Right. c) sounds like adding more contention to the candidate list.
I wonder if we can just mark the page as migration candidate (using
a page flag or something else), then migrate it whenever CMA,
compaction, long-term pinning and more look at the page. In addition,
periodically, the migration task would do a PFN scanning and migrate
any migration candidate. I remember Willy did some experiments showing
that PFN scanning is very fast.

--
Best Regards,
Yan, Zi