On Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:19:08 -0800 (PST)
David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:
quoted text
> My suggestion is merely to make the number of concurrent page reclaim 
> threads be a function of how many online cpus there are.  Threads can 
> easily be added or removed for cpu hotplug events by callback functions.
> 
> That's different than allowing users to change the number of threads with 
> yet another sysctl.  Unless there are situations that can be presented 
> where tuning the number of threads is advantageous to reduce lock 
> contention, for example, and not simply working around other VM problems, 
> then I see no point for an additional sysctl.
> 
> So my suggestion is to implement this in terms of 
> CONFIG_NUM_RECLAIM_THREADS_PER_CPU and add callback functions for cpu 
> hotplug events that add or remove this number of threads.
> 

Hmm, but kswapd, which is main worker of page reclaiming, is per-node.
And reclaim is done based on zone.
per-zone/per-node throttling seems to make sense.

I know his environment has 4cpus per node but throttle to 3 was the best
number in his measurement. Then it seems num-per-cpu is excessive.
(At least, ratio(%) is better.)
When zone-reclaiming is improved to be scale well, we'll have to change
this throttle.

BTW, could someone try his patch on x86_64/ppc ? 
I'd like to see how contention is heavy on other machines.

Thanks,
-kame
 

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