From d527caf22e48480b102c7c6ee5b9ba12170148f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Andrea Arcangeli Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:30:38 -0700 Subject: mm: compaction: prevent kswapd compacting memory to reduce CPU usage This patch reverts 5a03b051 ("thp: use compaction in kswapd for GFP_ATOMIC order > 0") due to reports stating that kswapd CPU usage was higher and IRQs were being disabled more frequently. This was reported at http://www.spinics.net/linux/fedora/alsa-user/msg09885.html. Without this patch applied, CPU usage by kswapd hovers around the 20% mark according to the tester (Arthur Marsh: http://www.spinics.net/linux/fedora/alsa-user/msg09899.html). With this patch applied, it's around 2%. The problem is not related to THP which specifies __GFP_NO_KSWAPD but is triggered by high-order allocations hitting the low watermark for their order and waking kswapd on kernels with CONFIG_COMPACTION set. The most common trigger for this is network cards configured for jumbo frames but it's also possible it'll be triggered by fork-heavy workloads (order-1) and some wireless cards which depend on order-1 allocations. The symptoms for the user will be high CPU usage by kswapd in low-memory situations which could be confused with another writeback problem. While a patch like 5a03b051 may be reintroduced in the future, this patch plays it safe for now and reverts it. [mel@csn.ul.ie: Beefed up the changelog] Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman Reported-by: Arthur Marsh Tested-by: Arthur Marsh Cc: [2.6.38.1] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- include/linux/compaction.h | 9 ++------- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) (limited to 'include/linux/compaction.h') diff --git a/include/linux/compaction.h b/include/linux/compaction.h index dfa2ed4c0d2..cc9f7a42864 100644 --- a/include/linux/compaction.h +++ b/include/linux/compaction.h @@ -11,9 +11,6 @@ /* The full zone was compacted */ #define COMPACT_COMPLETE 3 -#define COMPACT_MODE_DIRECT_RECLAIM 0 -#define COMPACT_MODE_KSWAPD 1 - #ifdef CONFIG_COMPACTION extern int sysctl_compact_memory; extern int sysctl_compaction_handler(struct ctl_table *table, int write, @@ -28,8 +25,7 @@ extern unsigned long try_to_compact_pages(struct zonelist *zonelist, bool sync); extern unsigned long compaction_suitable(struct zone *zone, int order); extern unsigned long compact_zone_order(struct zone *zone, int order, - gfp_t gfp_mask, bool sync, - int compact_mode); + gfp_t gfp_mask, bool sync); /* Do not skip compaction more than 64 times */ #define COMPACT_MAX_DEFER_SHIFT 6 @@ -74,8 +70,7 @@ static inline unsigned long compaction_suitable(struct zone *zone, int order) } static inline unsigned long compact_zone_order(struct zone *zone, int order, - gfp_t gfp_mask, bool sync, - int compact_mode) + gfp_t gfp_mask, bool sync) { return COMPACT_CONTINUE; } -- cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2