tree c2568efdc496cc165a4e72d8aa2542b22035e342
parent 18a8bd949d6adb311ea816125ff65050df1f3f6e
author KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> 1184567881 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org> 1184601935 -0700

change zonelist order: zonelist order selection logic

Make zonelist creation policy selectable from sysctl/boot option v6.

This patch makes NUMA's zonelist (of pgdat) order selectable.
Available order are Default(automatic)/ Node-based / Zone-based.

[Default Order]
The kernel selects Node-based or Zone-based order automatically.

[Node-based Order]
This policy treats the locality of memory as the most important parameter.
Zonelist order is created by each zone's locality. This means lower zones
(ex. ZONE_DMA) can be used before higher zone (ex. ZONE_NORMAL) exhausion.
IOW. ZONE_DMA will be in the middle of zonelist.
current 2.6.21 kernel uses this.

Pros.
 * A user can expect local memory as much as possible.
Cons.
 * lower zone will be exhansted before higher zone. This may cause OOM_KILL.

Maybe suitable if ZONE_DMA is relatively big and you never see OOM_KILL
because of ZONE_DMA exhaution and you need the best locality.

(example)
assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL.

*node(0)'s memory allocation order:

 node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA -> node(1)'s NORMAL.

*node(1)'s memory allocation order:

 node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

[Zone-based order]
This policy treats the zone type as the most important parameter.
Zonelist order is created by zone-type order. This means lower zone
never be used bofere higher zone exhaustion.
IOW. ZONE_DMA will be always at the tail of zonelist.

Pros.
 * OOM_KILL(bacause of lower zone) occurs only if the whole zones are exhausted.
Cons.
 * memory locality may not be best.

(example)
assume 2 node NUMA. node(0) has ZONE_DMA/ZONE_NORMAL, node(1) has ZONE_NORMAL.

*node(0)'s memory allocation order:

 node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

*node(1)'s memory allocation order:

 node(1)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s NORMAL -> node(0)'s DMA.

bootoption "numa_zonelist_order=" and proc/sysctl is supporetd.

command:
%echo N > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order

Will rebuild zonelist in Node-based order.

command:
%echo Z > /proc/sys/vm/numa_zonelist_order

Will rebuild zonelist in Zone-based order.

Thanks to Lee Schermerhorn, he gives me much help and codes.

[Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com: add check_highest_zone to build_zonelists_in_zone_order]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: build fix]
Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: "jesse.barnes@intel.com" <jesse.barnes@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>