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SubjectRe: [PATCH] ksm: Provide support to use deferred timers for scanner thread
Thanks Andrew for reviewing. This is my first upstream patch :)

On 07/24/2014 01:51 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:41:32 +0530 Chintan Pandya<cpandya@codeaurora.org> wrote:
>
>> KSM thread to scan pages is getting schedule on definite timeout.
>> That wakes up CPU from idle state and hence may affect the power
>> consumption. Provide an optional support to use deferred timer
>> which suites low-power use-cases.
>
> Do you have any data on the effectiveness of this patch? Because if it
> makes no useful difference, we shouldn't merge it!

Typically, we observed 10% less power consumption with some use-cases
which in which CPU goes to power collapse frequently. For example,
playing Audio on SoC where typically CPU is idle.

I will mention this in commit text also.
>
>> To enable deferred timers,
>> $ echo 1> /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/deferred_timer
>
> It would be preferable to do this unconditionally (or automatically
> somehow) rather than adding yet another weird knob.

This has some trade-off. We have observed that KSM does maximum savings
when system is idle. Where power is not concern but memory saving is, we
may want KSM timer as non-deferrable. Considering that, I preferred to
provide knob.
>
>> Signed-off-by: Chintan Pandya<cpandya@codeaurora.org>
>> ---
>> Documentation/vm/ksm.txt | 7 ++++++
>> mm/ksm.c | 65 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
>> 2 files changed, 71 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt b/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt
>> index f34a8ee..f40b965 100644
>> --- a/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt
>> +++ b/Documentation/vm/ksm.txt
>> @@ -87,6 +87,13 @@ pages_sharing - how many more sites are sharing them i.e. how much saved
>> pages_unshared - how many pages unique but repeatedly checked for merging
>> pages_volatile - how many pages changing too fast to be placed in a tree
>> full_scans - how many times all mergeable areas have been scanned
>> +deferred_timer - whether to use deferred timers or not
>> + e.g. "echo 1> /sys/kernel/mm/ksm/deferred_timer"
>> + Default: 0 (means, we are not using deferred timers. Users
>> + might want to set deferred_timer option if they donot want
>> + ksm thread to wakeup CPU to carryout ksm activities thus
>> + gaining on battery while compromising slightly on memory
>> + that could have been saved.)
>>
>> A high ratio of pages_sharing to pages_shared indicates good sharing, but
>> a high ratio of pages_unshared to pages_sharing indicates wasted effort.
>> diff --git a/mm/ksm.c b/mm/ksm.c
>> index 346ddc9..e26ec3b 100644
>> --- a/mm/ksm.c
>> +++ b/mm/ksm.c
>> @@ -223,6 +223,9 @@ static unsigned int ksm_thread_pages_to_scan = 100;
>> /* Milliseconds ksmd should sleep between batches */
>> static unsigned int ksm_thread_sleep_millisecs = 20;
>>
>> +/* Boolean to indicate whether to use deferred timer or not */
>> +static bool use_deferred_timer;
>> +
>> #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
>> /* Zeroed when merging across nodes is not allowed */
>> static unsigned int ksm_merge_across_nodes = 1;
>> @@ -1705,6 +1708,41 @@ static void ksm_do_scan(unsigned int scan_npages)
>> }
>> }
>>
>> +static void process_timeout(unsigned long __data)
>> +{
>> + wake_up_process((struct task_struct *)__data);
>> +}
>> +
>> +static signed long __sched deferred_schedule_timeout(signed long timeout)
>
> Should be called schedule_timeout_deferrable_interruptible() for
> consistency.
>
> And let's not start mixing "deferred" and "deferrable".

Sure. I will use schedule_timeout_deferrable_interruptible().

>
>> +{
>> + struct timer_list timer;
>> + unsigned long expire;
>> +
>> + __set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
>> + if (timeout< 0) {
>> + pr_err("schedule_timeout: wrong timeout value %lx\n",
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ copy-n-paste?

My bad.

>> + timeout);
>> + __set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING);
>> + goto out;
>> + }
>> +
>> + expire = timeout + jiffies;
>> +
>> + setup_deferrable_timer_on_stack(&timer, process_timeout,
>> + (unsigned long)current);
>> + mod_timer(&timer, expire);
>> + schedule();
>> + del_singleshot_timer_sync(&timer);
>> +
>> + /* Remove the timer from the object tracker */
>> + destroy_timer_on_stack(&timer);
>> +
>> + timeout = expire - jiffies;
>> +
>> +out:
>> + return timeout< 0 ? 0 : timeout;
>> +}
>
> Methinks all this should be in kernel/timer.c (kernel/time/timer.c in
> linux-next). And it should be documented. That means a separate patch
> and review by Thomas Gleixner and probably others.

Ok. I will break this patch and upload again.

>
> I haven't looked, but I expect a lot of schedule_timeout() callsites
> could be converted to use such a thing.

From our internal power experiments, we have seen only KSM waking up
CPUs from sleep. Not sure about other use-cases. But an API would help all.

>
>> static int ksmd_should_run(void)
>> {
>> return (ksm_run& KSM_RUN_MERGE)&& !list_empty(&ksm_mm_head.mm_list);
>> @@ -1725,7 +1763,11 @@ static int ksm_scan_thread(void *nothing)
>> try_to_freeze();
>>
>> if (ksmd_should_run()) {
>> - schedule_timeout_interruptible(
>> + if (use_deferred_timer)
>> + deferred_schedule_timeout(
>> + msecs_to_jiffies(ksm_thread_sleep_millisecs));
>> + else
>> + schedule_timeout_interruptible(
>> msecs_to_jiffies(ksm_thread_sleep_millisecs));
>> } else {
>> wait_event_freezable(ksm_thread_wait,
>> @@ -2181,6 +2223,26 @@ static ssize_t run_store(struct kobject *kobj, struct kobj_attribute *attr,
>> }
>> KSM_ATTR(run);
>>
>> +static ssize_t deferred_timer_show(struct kobject *kobj,
>> + struct kobj_attribute *attr, char *buf)
>> +{
>> + return snprintf(buf, 8, "%d\n", use_deferred_timer);
>> +}
>> +
>> +static ssize_t deferred_timer_store(struct kobject *kobj,
>> + struct kobj_attribute *attr,
>> + const char *buf, size_t count)
>> +{
>> + unsigned long enable;
>> + int err;
>> +
>> + err = kstrtoul(buf, 10,&enable);
>> + use_deferred_timer = enable;
>
> We should check for legitimate values here. ie: 0 or 1 only.

Ok.

>
>> + return count;
>> +}
>> +KSM_ATTR(deferred_timer);
>> +
>> #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
>> static ssize_t merge_across_nodes_show(struct kobject *kobj,
>> struct kobj_attribute *attr, char *buf)
>> @@ -2293,6 +2355,7 @@ static struct attribute *ksm_attrs[] = {
>> &pages_unshared_attr.attr,
>> &pages_volatile_attr.attr,
>> &full_scans_attr.attr,
>> + &deferred_timer_attr.attr,
>> #ifdef CONFIG_NUMA
>> &merge_across_nodes_attr.attr,
>> #endif
>

I will re-share new patch set incorporating above comments, in some days.

--
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