diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst | 97 |
1 files changed, 78 insertions, 19 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst index b0cc8243e093..04eb45a2f940 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/transhuge.rst @@ -45,10 +45,25 @@ components: the two is using hugepages just because of the fact the TLB miss is going to run faster. +Modern kernels support "multi-size THP" (mTHP), which introduces the +ability to allocate memory in blocks that are bigger than a base page +but smaller than traditional PMD-size (as described above), in +increments of a power-of-2 number of pages. mTHP can back anonymous +memory (for example 16K, 32K, 64K, etc). These THPs continue to be +PTE-mapped, but in many cases can still provide similar benefits to +those outlined above: Page faults are significantly reduced (by a +factor of e.g. 4, 8, 16, etc), but latency spikes are much less +prominent because the size of each page isn't as huge as the PMD-sized +variant and there is less memory to clear in each page fault. Some +architectures also employ TLB compression mechanisms to squeeze more +entries in when a set of PTEs are virtually and physically contiguous +and approporiately aligned. In this case, TLB misses will occur less +often. + THP can be enabled system wide or restricted to certain tasks or even memory ranges inside task's address space. Unless THP is completely disabled, there is ``khugepaged`` daemon that scans memory and -collapses sequences of basic pages into huge pages. +collapses sequences of basic pages into PMD-sized huge pages. The THP behaviour is controlled via :ref:`sysfs <thp_sysfs>` interface and using madvise(2) and prctl(2) system calls. @@ -95,12 +110,40 @@ Global THP controls Transparent Hugepage Support for anonymous memory can be entirely disabled (mostly for debugging purposes) or only enabled inside MADV_HUGEPAGE regions (to avoid the risk of consuming more memory resources) or enabled -system wide. This can be achieved with one of:: +system wide. This can be achieved per-supported-THP-size with one of:: + + echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-<size>kB/enabled + echo madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-<size>kB/enabled + echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-<size>kB/enabled + +where <size> is the hugepage size being addressed, the available sizes +for which vary by system. + +For example:: + + echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-2048kB/enabled + +Alternatively it is possible to specify that a given hugepage size +will inherit the top-level "enabled" value:: + + echo inherit >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-<size>kB/enabled + +For example:: + + echo inherit >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-2048kB/enabled + +The top-level setting (for use with "inherit") can be set by issuing +one of the following commands:: echo always >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled echo madvise >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled +By default, PMD-sized hugepages have enabled="inherit" and all other +hugepage sizes have enabled="never". If enabling multiple hugepage +sizes, the kernel will select the most appropriate enabled size for a +given allocation. + It's also possible to limit defrag efforts in the VM to generate anonymous hugepages in case they're not immediately free to madvise regions or to never try to defrag memory and simply fallback to regular @@ -146,25 +189,34 @@ madvise never should be self-explanatory. -By default kernel tries to use huge zero page on read page fault to -anonymous mapping. It's possible to disable huge zero page by writing 0 -or enable it back by writing 1:: +By default kernel tries to use huge, PMD-mappable zero page on read +page fault to anonymous mapping. It's possible to disable huge zero +page by writing 0 or enable it back by writing 1:: echo 0 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/use_zero_page echo 1 >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/use_zero_page -Some userspace (such as a test program, or an optimized memory allocation -library) may want to know the size (in bytes) of a transparent hugepage:: +Some userspace (such as a test program, or an optimized memory +allocation library) may want to know the size (in bytes) of a +PMD-mappable transparent hugepage:: cat /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hpage_pmd_size -khugepaged will be automatically started when -transparent_hugepage/enabled is set to "always" or "madvise, and it'll -be automatically shutdown if it's set to "never". +khugepaged will be automatically started when one or more hugepage +sizes are enabled (either by directly setting "always" or "madvise", +or by setting "inherit" while the top-level enabled is set to "always" +or "madvise"), and it'll be automatically shutdown when the last +hugepage size is disabled (either by directly setting "never", or by +setting "inherit" while the top-level enabled is set to "never"). Khugepaged controls ------------------- +.. note:: + khugepaged currently only searches for opportunities to collapse to + PMD-sized THP and no attempt is made to collapse to other THP + sizes. + khugepaged runs usually at low frequency so while one may not want to invoke defrag algorithms synchronously during the page faults, it should be worth invoking defrag at least in khugepaged. However it's @@ -282,19 +334,26 @@ force Need of application restart =========================== -The transparent_hugepage/enabled values and tmpfs mount option only affect -future behavior. So to make them effective you need to restart any -application that could have been using hugepages. This also applies to the -regions registered in khugepaged. +The transparent_hugepage/enabled and +transparent_hugepage/hugepages-<size>kB/enabled values and tmpfs mount +option only affect future behavior. So to make them effective you need +to restart any application that could have been using hugepages. This +also applies to the regions registered in khugepaged. Monitoring usage ================ -The number of anonymous transparent huge pages currently used by the +.. note:: + Currently the below counters only record events relating to + PMD-sized THP. Events relating to other THP sizes are not included. + +The number of PMD-sized anonymous transparent huge pages currently used by the system is available by reading the AnonHugePages field in ``/proc/meminfo``. -To identify what applications are using anonymous transparent huge pages, -it is necessary to read ``/proc/PID/smaps`` and count the AnonHugePages fields -for each mapping. +To identify what applications are using PMD-sized anonymous transparent huge +pages, it is necessary to read ``/proc/PID/smaps`` and count the AnonHugePages +fields for each mapping. (Note that AnonHugePages only applies to traditional +PMD-sized THP for historical reasons and should have been called +AnonHugePmdMapped). The number of file transparent huge pages mapped to userspace is available by reading ShmemPmdMapped and ShmemHugePages fields in ``/proc/meminfo``. @@ -413,7 +472,7 @@ for huge pages. Optimizing the applications =========================== -To be guaranteed that the kernel will map a 2M page immediately in any +To be guaranteed that the kernel will map a THP immediately in any memory region, the mmap region has to be hugepage naturally aligned. posix_memalign() can provide that guarantee. |