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  1. 20 2月, 2009 1 次提交
  3. 05 8月, 2008 1 次提交
    • P
      SLUB: dynamic per-cache MIN_PARTIAL · 5595cffc
      由 Pekka Enberg 提交于 
      This patch changes the static MIN_PARTIAL to a dynamic per-cache ->min_partial
value that is calculated from object size. The bigger the object size, the more
pages we keep on the partial list.

I tested SLAB, SLUB, and SLUB with this patch on Jens Axboe's 'netio' example
script of the fio benchmarking tool. The script stresses the networking
subsystem which should also give a fairly good beating of kmalloc() et al.

To run the test yourself, first clone the fio repository:

  git clone git://git.kernel.dk/fio.git

and then run the following command n times on your machine:

  time ./fio examples/netio

The results on my 2-way 64-bit x86 machine are as follows:

  [ the minimum, maximum, and average are captured from 50 individual runs ]

                 real time (seconds)
                 min      max      avg      sd
  SLAB           22.76    23.38    22.98    0.17
  SLUB           22.80    25.78    23.46    0.72
  SLUB (dynamic) 22.74    23.54    23.00    0.20

                 sys time (seconds)
                 min      max      avg      sd
  SLAB           6.90     8.28     7.70     0.28
  SLUB           7.42     16.95    8.89     2.28
  SLUB (dynamic) 7.17     8.64     7.73     0.29

                 user time (seconds)
                 min      max      avg      sd
  SLAB           36.89    38.11    37.50    0.29
  SLUB           30.85    37.99    37.06    1.67
  SLUB (dynamic) 36.75    38.07    37.59    0.32

As you can see from the above numbers, this patch brings SLUB to the same level
as SLAB for this particular workload fixing a ~2% regression. I'd expect this
change to help similar workloads that allocate a lot of objects that are close
to the size of a page.

Cc: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Acked-by: NChristoph Lameter <cl@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
      5595cffc
  5. 27 7月, 2008 1 次提交
  7. 05 7月, 2008 1 次提交
  9. 04 7月, 2008 1 次提交
  11. 27 4月, 2008 3 次提交
    • C
      slub: Fallback to minimal order during slab page allocation · 65c3376a
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      If any higher order allocation fails then fall back the smallest order
necessary to contain at least one object. This enables fallback for all
allocations to order 0 pages. The fallback will waste more memory (objects
will not fit neatly) and the fallback slabs will be not as efficient as larger
slabs since they contain less objects.

Note that SLAB also depends on order 1 allocations for some slabs that waste
too much memory if forced into PAGE_SIZE'd page. SLUB now can now deal with
failing order 1 allocs which SLAB cannot do.

Add a new field min that will contain the objects for the smallest possible order
for a slab cache.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
      65c3376a
    • C
      slub: Update statistics handling for variable order slabs · 205ab99d
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      Change the statistics to consider that slabs of the same slabcache
can have different number of objects in them since they may be of
different order.

Provide a new sysfs field

	total_objects

which shows the total objects that the allocated slabs of a slabcache
could hold.

Add a max field that holds the largest slab order that was ever used
for a slab cache.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
      205ab99d
    • C
      slub: Add kmem_cache_order_objects struct · 834f3d11
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      Pack the order and the number of objects into a single word.
This saves some memory in the kmem_cache_structure and more importantly
allows us to fetch both values atomically.

Later the slab orders become runtime configurable and we need to fetch these
two items together in order to properly allocate a slab and initialize its
objects.

Fix the race by fetching the order and the number of objects in one word.

[penberg@cs.helsinki.fi: fix memset() page order in new_slab()]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
      834f3d11
  13. 14 4月, 2008 1 次提交
    • C
      slub: No need for per node slab counters if !SLUB_DEBUG · 0f389ec6
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      The per node counters are used mainly for showing data through the sysfs API.
If that API is not compiled in then there is no point in keeping track of this
data. Disable counters for the number of slabs and the number of total slabs
if !SLUB_DEBUG. Incrementing the per node counters is also accessing a
potentially contended cacheline so this could actually be a performance
benefit to embedded systems.

SLABINFO support is also affected. It now must depends on SLUB_DEBUG (which
is on by default).

Patch also avoids a check for a NULL kmem_cache_node pointer in new_slab()
if the system is not compiled with NUMA support.

[penberg@cs.helsinki.fi: fix oops and move ->nr_slabs into CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
      0f389ec6
  15. 04 3月, 2008 1 次提交
  17. 15 2月, 2008 3 次提交
  19. 08 2月, 2008 1 次提交
    • C
      SLUB: Support for performance statistics · 8ff12cfc
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      The statistics provided here allow the monitoring of allocator behavior but
at the cost of some (minimal) loss of performance. Counters are placed in
SLUB's per cpu data structure. The per cpu structure may be extended by the
statistics to grow larger than one cacheline which will increase the cache
footprint of SLUB.

There is a compile option to enable/disable the inclusion of the runtime
statistics and its off by default.

The slabinfo tool is enhanced to support these statistics via two options:

-D 	Switches the line of information displayed for a slab from size
	mode to activity mode.

-A	Sorts the slabs displayed by activity. This allows the display of
	the slabs most important to the performance of a certain load.

-r	Report option will report detailed statistics on

Example (tbench load):

slabinfo -AD		->Shows the most active slabs

Name                   Objects    Alloc     Free   %Fast
skbuff_fclone_cache         33 111953835 111953835  99  99
:0000192                  2666  5283688  5281047  99  99
:0001024                   849  5247230  5246389  83  83
vm_area_struct            1349   119642   118355  91  22
:0004096                    15    66753    66751  98  98
:0000064                  2067    25297    23383  98  78
dentry                   10259    28635    18464  91  45
:0000080                 11004    18950     8089  98  98
:0000096                  1703    12358    10784  99  98
:0000128                   762    10582     9875  94  18
:0000512                   184     9807     9647  95  81
:0002048                   479     9669     9195  83  65
anon_vma                   777     9461     9002  99  71
kmalloc-8                 6492     9981     5624  99  97
:0000768                   258     7174     6931  58  15

So the skbuff_fclone_cache is of highest importance for the tbench load.
Pretty high load on the 192 sized slab. Look for the aliases

slabinfo -a | grep 000192
:0000192     <- xfs_btree_cur filp kmalloc-192 uid_cache tw_sock_TCP
	request_sock_TCPv6 tw_sock_TCPv6 skbuff_head_cache xfs_ili

Likely skbuff_head_cache.


Looking into the statistics of the skbuff_fclone_cache is possible through

slabinfo skbuff_fclone_cache	->-r option implied if cache name is mentioned


.... Usual output ...

Slab Perf Counter       Alloc     Free %Al %Fr
--------------------------------------------------
Fastpath             111953360 111946981  99  99
Slowpath                 1044     7423   0   0
Page Alloc                272      264   0   0
Add partial                25      325   0   0
Remove partial             86      264   0   0
RemoteObj/SlabFrozen      350     4832   0   0
Total                111954404 111954404

Flushes       49 Refill        0
Deactivate Full=325(92%) Empty=0(0%) ToHead=24(6%) ToTail=1(0%)

Looks good because the fastpath is overwhelmingly taken.


skbuff_head_cache:

Slab Perf Counter       Alloc     Free %Al %Fr
--------------------------------------------------
Fastpath              5297262  5259882  99  99
Slowpath                 4477    39586   0   0
Page Alloc                937      824   0   0
Add partial                 0     2515   0   0
Remove partial           1691      824   0   0
RemoteObj/SlabFrozen     2621     9684   0   0
Total                 5301739  5299468

Deactivate Full=2620(100%) Empty=0(0%) ToHead=0(0%) ToTail=0(0%)


Descriptions of the output:

Total:		The total number of allocation and frees that occurred for a
		slab

Fastpath:	The number of allocations/frees that used the fastpath.

Slowpath:	Other allocations

Page Alloc:	Number of calls to the page allocator as a result of slowpath
		processing

Add Partial:	Number of slabs added to the partial list through free or
		alloc (occurs during cpuslab flushes)

Remove Partial:	Number of slabs removed from the partial list as a result of
		allocations retrieving a partial slab or by a free freeing
		the last object of a slab.

RemoteObj/Froz:	How many times were remotely freed object encountered when a
		slab was about to be deactivated. Frozen: How many times was
		free able to skip list processing because the slab was in use
		as the cpuslab of another processor.

Flushes:	Number of times the cpuslab was flushed on request
		(kmem_cache_shrink, may result from races in __slab_alloc)

Refill:		Number of times we were able to refill the cpuslab from
		remotely freed objects for the same slab.

Deactivate:	Statistics how slabs were deactivated. Shows how they were
		put onto the partial list.

In general fastpath is very good. Slowpath without partial list processing is
also desirable. Any touching of partial list uses node specific locks which
may potentially cause list lock contention.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
      8ff12cfc
  21. 05 2月, 2008 2 次提交
  23. 03 1月, 2008 1 次提交
  25. 02 1月, 2008 1 次提交
  27. 17 10月, 2007 6 次提交
    • C
      Slab API: remove useless ctor parameter and reorder parameters · 4ba9b9d0
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      Slab constructors currently have a flags parameter that is never used.  And
the order of the arguments is opposite to other slab functions.  The object
pointer is placed before the kmem_cache pointer.

Convert

        ctor(void *object, struct kmem_cache *s, unsigned long flags)

to

        ctor(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)

throughout the kernel

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: coupla fixes]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      4ba9b9d0
    • C
      SLUB: Optimize cacheline use for zeroing · 42a9fdbb
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      We touch a cacheline in the kmem_cache structure for zeroing to get the
size. However, the hot paths in slab_alloc and slab_free do not reference
any other fields in kmem_cache, so we may have to just bring in the
cacheline for this one access.

Add a new field to kmem_cache_cpu that contains the object size. That
cacheline must already be used in the hotpaths. So we save one cacheline
on every slab_alloc if we zero.

We need to update the kmem_cache_cpu object size if an aliasing operation
changes the objsize of an non debug slab.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      42a9fdbb
    • C
      SLUB: Place kmem_cache_cpu structures in a NUMA aware way · 4c93c355
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      The kmem_cache_cpu structures introduced are currently an array placed in the
kmem_cache struct. Meaning the kmem_cache_cpu structures are overwhelmingly
on the wrong node for systems with a higher amount of nodes. These are
performance critical structures since the per node information has
to be touched for every alloc and free in a slab.

In order to place the kmem_cache_cpu structure optimally we put an array
of pointers to kmem_cache_cpu structs in kmem_cache (similar to SLAB).

However, the kmem_cache_cpu structures can now be allocated in a more
intelligent way.

We would like to put per cpu structures for the same cpu but different
slab caches in cachelines together to save space and decrease the cache
footprint. However, the slab allocators itself control only allocations
per node. We set up a simple per cpu array for every processor with
100 per cpu structures which is usually enough to get them all set up right.
If we run out then we fall back to kmalloc_node. This also solves the
bootstrap problem since we do not have to use slab allocator functions
early in boot to get memory for the small per cpu structures.

Pro:
	- NUMA aware placement improves memory performance
	- All global structures in struct kmem_cache become readonly
	- Dense packing of per cpu structures reduces cacheline
	  footprint in SMP and NUMA.
	- Potential avoidance of exclusive cacheline fetches
	  on the free and alloc hotpath since multiple kmem_cache_cpu
	  structures are in one cacheline. This is particularly important
	  for the kmalloc array.

Cons:
	- Additional reference to one read only cacheline (per cpu
	  array of pointers to kmem_cache_cpu) in both slab_alloc()
	  and slab_free().

[akinobu.mita@gmail.com: fix cpu hotplug offline/online path]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: "Pekka Enberg" <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Cc: Akinobu Mita <akinobu.mita@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      4c93c355
    • C
      SLUB: Move page->offset to kmem_cache_cpu->offset · b3fba8da
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      We need the offset from the page struct during slab_alloc and slab_free. In
both cases we also reference the cacheline of the kmem_cache_cpu structure.
We can therefore move the offset field into the kmem_cache_cpu structure
freeing up 16 bits in the page struct.

Moving the offset allows an allocation from slab_alloc() without touching the
page struct in the hot path.

The only thing left in slab_free() that touches the page struct cacheline for
per cpu freeing is the checking of SlabDebug(page). The next patch deals with
that.

Use the available 16 bits to broaden page->inuse. More than 64k objects per
slab become possible and we can get rid of the checks for that limitation.

No need anymore to shrink the order of slabs if we boot with 2M sized slabs
(slub_min_order=9).

No need anymore to switch off the offset calculation for very large slabs
since the field in the kmem_cache_cpu structure is 32 bits and so the offset
field can now handle slab sizes of up to 8GB.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      b3fba8da
    • C
      SLUB: Avoid page struct cacheline bouncing due to remote frees to cpu slab · dfb4f096
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      A remote free may access the same page struct that also contains the lockless
freelist for the cpu slab. If objects have a short lifetime and are freed by
a different processor then remote frees back to the slab from which we are
currently allocating are frequent. The cacheline with the page struct needs
to be repeately acquired in exclusive mode by both the allocating thread and
the freeing thread. If this is frequent enough then performance will suffer
because of cacheline bouncing.

This patchset puts the lockless_freelist pointer in its own cacheline. In
order to make that happen we introduce a per cpu structure called
kmem_cache_cpu.

Instead of keeping an array of pointers to page structs we now keep an array
to a per cpu structure that--among other things--contains the pointer to the
lockless freelist. The freeing thread can then keep possession of exclusive
access to the page struct cacheline while the allocating thread keeps its
exclusive access to the cacheline containing the per cpu structure.

This works as long as the allocating cpu is able to service its request
from the lockless freelist. If the lockless freelist runs empty then the
allocating thread needs to acquire exclusive access to the cacheline with
the page struct lock the slab.

The allocating thread will then check if new objects were freed to the per
cpu slab. If so it will keep the slab as the cpu slab and continue with the
recently remote freed objects. So the allocating thread can take a series
of just freed remote pages and dish them out again. Ideally allocations
could be just recycling objects in the same slab this way which will lead
to an ideal allocation / remote free pattern.

The number of objects that can be handled in this way is limited by the
capacity of one slab. Increasing slab size via slub_min_objects/
slub_max_order may increase the number of objects and therefore performance.

If the allocating thread runs out of objects and finds that no objects were
put back by the remote processor then it will retrieve a new slab (from the
partial lists or from the page allocator) and start with a whole
new set of objects while the remote thread may still be freeing objects to
the old cpu slab. This may then repeat until the new slab is also exhausted.
If remote freeing has freed objects in the earlier slab then that earlier
slab will now be on the partial freelist and the allocating thread will
pick that slab next for allocation. So the loop is extended. However,
both threads need to take the list_lock to make the swizzling via
the partial list happen.

It is likely that this kind of scheme will keep the objects being passed
around to a small set that can be kept in the cpu caches leading to increased
performance.

More code cleanups become possible:

- Instead of passing a cpu we can now pass a kmem_cache_cpu structure around.
  Allows reducing the number of parameters to various functions.
- Can define a new node_match() function for NUMA to encapsulate locality
  checks.

Effect on allocations:

Cachelines touched before this patch:

	Write:	page cache struct and first cacheline of object

Cachelines touched after this patch:

	Write:	kmem_cache_cpu cacheline and first cacheline of object
	Read: page cache struct (but see later patch that avoids touching
		that cacheline)

The handling when the lockless alloc list runs empty gets to be a bit more
complicated since another cacheline has now to be written to. But that is
halfway out of the hot path.

Effect on freeing:

Cachelines touched before this patch:

	Write: page_struct and first cacheline of object

Cachelines touched after this patch depending on how we free:

  Write(to cpu_slab):	kmem_cache_cpu struct and first cacheline of object
  Write(to other):	page struct and first cacheline of object

  Read(to cpu_slab):	page struct to id slab etc. (but see later patch that
  			avoids touching the page struct on free)
  Read(to other):	cpu local kmem_cache_cpu struct to verify its not
  			the cpu slab.

Summary:

Pro:
	- Distinct cachelines so that concurrent remote frees and local
	  allocs on a cpuslab can occur without cacheline bouncing.
	- Avoids potential bouncing cachelines because of neighboring
	  per cpu pointer updates in kmem_cache's cpu_slab structure since
	  it now grows to a cacheline (Therefore remove the comment
	  that talks about that concern).

Cons:
	- Freeing objects now requires the reading of one additional
	  cacheline. That can be mitigated for some cases by the following
	  patches but its not possible to completely eliminate these
	  references.

	- Memory usage grows slightly.

	The size of each per cpu object is blown up from one word
	(pointing to the page_struct) to one cacheline with various data.
	So this is NR_CPUS*NR_SLABS*L1_BYTES more memory use. Lets say
	NR_SLABS is 100 and a cache line size of 128 then we have just
	increased SLAB metadata requirements by 12.8k per cpu.
	(Another later patch reduces these requirements)
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      dfb4f096
    • C
      SLUB: direct pass through of page size or higher kmalloc requests · aadb4bc4
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      This gets rid of all kmalloc caches larger than page size.  A kmalloc
request larger than PAGE_SIZE > 2 is going to be passed through to the page
allocator.  This works both inline where we will call __get_free_pages
instead of kmem_cache_alloc and in __kmalloc.

kfree is modified to check if the object is in a slab page. If not then
the page is freed via the page allocator instead. Roughly similar to what
SLOB does.

Advantages:
- Reduces memory overhead for kmalloc array
- Large kmalloc operations are faster since they do not
  need to pass through the slab allocator to get to the
  page allocator.
- Performance increase of 10%-20% on alloc and 50% on free for
  PAGE_SIZEd allocations.
  SLUB must call page allocator for each alloc anyways since
  the higher order pages which that allowed avoiding the page alloc calls
  are not available in a reliable way anymore. So we are basically removing
  useless slab allocator overhead.
- Large kmallocs yields page aligned object which is what
  SLAB did. Bad things like using page sized kmalloc allocations to
  stand in for page allocate allocs can be transparently handled and are not
  distinguishable from page allocator uses.
- Checking for too large objects can be removed since
  it is done by the page allocator.

Drawbacks:
- No accounting for large kmalloc slab allocations anymore
- No debugging of large kmalloc slab allocations.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      aadb4bc4
  29. 31 8月, 2007 1 次提交
  31. 20 7月, 2007 1 次提交
  33. 18 7月, 2007 3 次提交
  35. 17 7月, 2007 1 次提交
  37. 17 6月, 2007 1 次提交
    • C
      SLUB: minimum alignment fixes · 4b356be0
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      If ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is set to a value greater than 8 (SLUBs smallest
kmalloc cache) then SLUB may generate duplicate slabs in sysfs (yes again)
because the object size is padded to reach ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN.  Thus the
size of the small slabs is all the same.

No arch sets ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN larger than 8 though except mips which
for some reason wants a 128 byte alignment.

This patch increases the size of the smallest cache if
ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN is greater than 8.  In that case more and more of the
smallest caches are disabled.

If we do that then the count of the active general caches that is displayed
on boot is not correct anymore since we may skip elements of the kmalloc
array.  So count them separately.

This approach was tested by Havard yesterday.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@atmel.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      4b356be0
  39. 09 6月, 2007 1 次提交
  41. 17 5月, 2007 4 次提交
  43. 15 5月, 2007 1 次提交
  45. 08 5月, 2007 3 次提交
    • C
      slub: enable tracking of full slabs · 643b1138
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      If slab tracking is on then build a list of full slabs so that we can verify
the integrity of all slabs and are also able to built list of alloc/free
callers.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      643b1138
    • C
      SLUB: allocate smallest object size if the user asks for 0 bytes · 614410d5
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      Makes SLUB behave like SLAB in this area to avoid issues....

Throw a stack dump to alert people.

At some point the behavior should be switched back.  NULL is no memory as
far as I can tell and if the use asked for 0 bytes then he need to get no
memory.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      614410d5
    • C
      SLUB core · 81819f0f
      由 Christoph Lameter 提交于 
      This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the
existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns
with the existing implementation.

A. Management of object queues

   A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object
   queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for
   each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of
   queueing them up.

B. Storage overhead of object queues

   SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even
   has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each
   node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of
   objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our
   systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up
   for storing references to objects for those queues  This does not include
   the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole
   memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues.

C. SLAB meta data overhead

   SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data
   cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps
   all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally
   aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte
   boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over.
   SLAB cannot do this.

D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper

   SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems
   the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that
   operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list
   of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues
   during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs.

E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support

   SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that
   allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that
   situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of
   policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is
   certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to
   memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from
   one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects
   from one node and then will switch to the next.

F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists

   SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large
   number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can
   only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global
   pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to
   decrease fragmentation.

G. Tunables

   SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can
   manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still
   requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global
   parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab
   order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the
   less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the
   better SLUB will be scaling.

G. Slab merging

   We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those
   on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This
   leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can
   be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease
   slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled
   up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying
   slub_nomerge on boot up.

   Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel
   because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt
   differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those.

H. Diagnostics

   The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a
   recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that
   is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths).
   SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option.
   Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of
   slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running
   with the usual performance and it is much more likely that
   race conditions can be reproduced.

I. Resiliency

   If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting
   common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the
   system to continue.

J. Tracing

   Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option
   during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache
   and dump the object contents on free.

K. On demand DMA cache creation.

   Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with
   __GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed.
   For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is
   completely eliminated.

L. Performance increase

   Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the
   range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the
   underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate
   larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub
   performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may
   enable further performance increases.

Tested on:
i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator

SLUB Boot options

slub_nomerge		Disable merging of slabs
slub_min_order=x	Require a minimum order for slab caches. This
			increases the managed chunk size and therefore
			reduces meta data and locking overhead.
slub_min_objects=x	Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8.
slub_max_order=x	Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified.
slub_debug		Enable all diagnostics for all caches
slub_debug=<options>	Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=<o>,<cache>	Enable selective options for a certain set of
			caches

Available Debug options
F		Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency
R		Red zoning
P		Object / padding poisoning
U		Track last free / alloc
T		Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs).

To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab
allocator.

[hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NHugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      81819f0f