mm/slab: introduce new slab management type, OBJFREELIST_SLAB
SLAB needs a array to manage freed objects in a slab. It is only used if
some objects are freed so we can use free object itself as this array.
This requires additional branch in somewhat critical lock path to check if
it is first freed object or not but that's all we need. Benefits is that
we can save extra memory usage and reduce some computational overhead by
allocating a management array when new slab is created.
Code change is rather complex than what we can expect from the idea, in
order to handle debugging feature efficiently. If you want to see core
idea only, please remove '#if DEBUG' block in the patch.
Although this idea can apply to all caches whose size is larger than
management array size, it isn't applied to caches which have a
constructor. If such cache's object is used for management array,
constructor should be called for it before that object is returned to
user. I guess that overhead overwhelm benefit in that case so this idea
doesn't applied to them at least now.
For summary, from now on, slab management type is determined by
following logic.
1) if management array size is smaller than object size and no ctor, it
becomes OBJFREELIST_SLAB.
2) if management array size is smaller than leftover, it becomes
NORMAL_SLAB which uses leftover as a array.
3) if OFF_SLAB help to save memory than way 4), it becomes OFF_SLAB.
It allocate a management array from the other cache so memory waste
happens.
4) others become NORMAL_SLAB. It uses dedicated internal memory in a
slab as a management array so it causes memory waste.
In my system, without enabling CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB, Almost caches become
OBJFREELIST_SLAB and NORMAL_SLAB (using leftover) which doesn't waste
memory. Following is the result of number of caches with specific slab
management type.
TOTAL = OBJFREELIST + NORMAL(leftover) + NORMAL + OFF
/Before/
126 = 0 + 60 + 25 + 41
/After/
126 = 97 + 12 + 15 + 2
Result shows that number of caches that doesn't waste memory increase
from 60 to 109.
I did some benchmarking and it looks that benefit are more than loss.
In fact, I tested another idea implementing OBJFREELIST_SLAB with
extendable linked array through another freed object. It can remove
memory waste completely but it causes more computational overhead in
critical lock path and it seems that overhead outweigh benefit. So, this
patch doesn't include it.
Signed-off-by: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com> Cc: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>