mm: multi-gen LRU: groundwork

Evictable pages are divided into multiple generations for each lruvec.
The youngest generation number is stored in lrugen->max_seq for both
anon and file types as they are aged on an equal footing. The oldest
generation numbers are stored in lrugen->min_seq[] separately for anon
and file types as clean file pages can be evicted regardless of swap
constraints. These three variables are monotonically increasing.

Generation numbers are truncated into order_base_2(MAX_NR_GENS+1) bits
in order to fit into the gen counter in folio->flags. Each truncated
generation number is an index to lrugen->lists[]. The sliding window
technique is used to track at least MIN_NR_GENS and at most
MAX_NR_GENS generations. The gen counter stores a value within [1,
MAX_NR_GENS] while a page is on one of lrugen->lists[]. Otherwise it
stores 0.

There are two conceptually independent procedures: "the aging", which
produces young generations, and "the eviction", which consumes old
generations.  They form a closed-loop system, i.e., "the page reclaim". 
Both procedures can be invoked from userspace for the purposes of working
set estimation and proactive reclaim.  These techniques are commonly used
to optimize job scheduling (bin packing) in data centers [1][2].

To avoid confusion, the terms "hot" and "cold" will be applied to the
multi-gen LRU, as a new convention; the terms "active" and "inactive" will
be applied to the active/inactive LRU, as usual.

The protection of hot pages and the selection of cold pages are based
on page access channels and patterns. There are two access channels:
one through page tables and the other through file descriptors. The
protection of the former channel is by design stronger because:
1. The uncertainty in determining the access patterns of the former
   channel is higher due to the approximation of the accessed bit.
2. The cost of evicting the former channel is higher due to the TLB
   flushes required and the likelihood of encountering the dirty bit.
3. The penalty of underprotecting the former channel is higher because
   applications usually do not prepare themselves for major page
   faults like they do for blocked I/O. E.g., GUI applications
   commonly use dedicated I/O threads to avoid blocking rendering
   threads.

There are also two access patterns: one with temporal locality and the
other without.  For the reasons listed above, the former channel is
assumed to follow the former pattern unless VM_SEQ_READ or VM_RAND_READ is
present; the latter channel is assumed to follow the latter pattern unless
outlying refaults have been observed [3][4].

The next patch will address the "outlying refaults".  Three macros, i.e.,
LRU_REFS_WIDTH, LRU_REFS_PGOFF and LRU_REFS_MASK, used later are added in
this patch to make the entire patchset less diffy.

A page is added to the youngest generation on faulting.  The aging needs
to check the accessed bit at least twice before handing this page over to
the eviction.  The first check takes care of the accessed bit set on the
initial fault; the second check makes sure this page has not been used
since then.  This protocol, AKA second chance, requires a minimum of two
generations, hence MIN_NR_GENS.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3297858.3304053
[2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3503222.3507731
[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/495543/
[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/815342/

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220918080010.2920238-6-yuzhao@google.com
Signed-off-by: Yu Zhao <yuzhao@google.com>
Acked-by: Brian Geffon <bgeffon@google.com>
Acked-by: Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
Acked-by: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@natalenko.name>
Acked-by: Steven Barrett <steven@liquorix.net>
Acked-by: Suleiman Souhlal <suleiman@google.com>
Tested-by: Daniel Byrne <djbyrne@mtu.edu>
Tested-by: Donald Carr <d@chaos-reins.com>
Tested-by: Holger Hoffstätte <holger@applied-asynchrony.com>
Tested-by: Konstantin Kharlamov <Hi-Angel@yandex.ru>
Tested-by: Shuang Zhai <szhai2@cs.rochester.edu>
Tested-by: Sofia Trinh <sofia.trinh@edi.works>
Tested-by: Vaibhav Jain <vaibhav@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Aneesh Kumar K.V <aneesh.kumar@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Barry Song <baohua@kernel.org>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Hillf Danton <hdanton@sina.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>
Cc: Michael Larabel <Michael@MichaelLarabel.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Qi Zheng <zhengqi.arch@bytedance.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 5 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/bounds.c b/kernel/bounds.c
index 9795d75b09b2..5ee60777d8e4 100644
--- a/kernel/bounds.c
+++ b/kernel/bounds.c
@@ -22,6 +22,11 @@ int main(void)
 	DEFINE(NR_CPUS_BITS, ilog2(CONFIG_NR_CPUS));
 #endif
 	DEFINE(SPINLOCK_SIZE, sizeof(spinlock_t));
+#ifdef CONFIG_LRU_GEN
+	DEFINE(LRU_GEN_WIDTH, order_base_2(MAX_NR_GENS + 1));
+#else
+	DEFINE(LRU_GEN_WIDTH, 0);
+#endif
 	/* End of constants */
 
 	return 0;