Patch series "Extend DAMOS for Proactive LRU-lists Sorting".

Introduction
============

In short, this patchset 1) extends DAMON-based Operation Schemes (DAMOS)
for low overhead data access pattern based LRU-lists sorting, and 2)
implements a static kernel module for easy use of conservatively-tuned
version of that using the extended DAMOS capability.

Background
----------

As page-granularity access checking overhead could be significant on huge
systems, LRU lists are normally not proactively sorted but partially and
reactively sorted for special events including specific user requests,
system calls and memory pressure.  As a result, LRU lists are sometimes
not so perfectly prepared to be used as a trustworthy access pattern
source for some situations including reclamation target pages selection
under sudden memory pressure.

DAMON-based Proactive LRU-lists Sorting
---------------------------------------

Because DAMON can identify access patterns of best-effort accuracy while
inducing only user-specified range of overhead, using DAMON for Proactive
LRU-lists Sorting (PLRUS) could be helpful for this situation.  The idea
is quite simple.  Find hot pages and cold pages using DAMON, and
prioritize hot pages while deprioritizing cold pages on their LRU-lists.

This patchset extends DAMON to support such schemes by introducing a
couple of new DAMOS actions for prioritizing and deprioritizing memory
regions of specific access patterns on their LRU-lists.  In detail, this
patchset simply uses 'mark_page_accessed()' and 'deactivate_page()'
functions for prioritization and deprioritization of pages on their LRU
lists, respectively.

To make the scheme easy to use without complex tuning for common
situations, this patchset further implements a static kernel module called
'DAMON_LRU_SORT' using the extended DAMOS functionality.  It proactively
sorts LRU-lists using DAMON with conservatively chosen default
hotness/coldness thresholds and small CPU usage quota limit.  That is, the
module under its default parameters will make no harm for common situation
but provide some level of benefit for systems having clear hot/cold access
pattern under only memory pressure while consuming only limited small
portion of CPU time.

Related Works
-------------

Proactive reclamation is well known to be helpful for reducing non-optimal
reclamation target selection caused performance drops.  However, proactive
reclamation is not a best option for some cases, because it could incur
additional I/O.  For an example, it could be prohitive for systems using
storage devices that total number of writes is limited, or cloud block
storages that charges every I/O.

Some proactive reclamation approaches[1,2] induce a level of memory
pressure using memcg files or swappiness while monitoring PSI.  As
reclamation target selection is still relying on the original LRU-lists
mechanism, using DAMON-based proactive reclamation before inducing the
proactive reclamation could allow more memory saving with same level of
performance overhead, or less performance overhead with same level of
memory saving.

[1] https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/post/anticipating-your-memory-needs
[2] https://www.pdl.cmu.edu/ftp/NVM/tmo_asplos22.pdf

Evaluation
==========

In short, PLRUS achieves 10% memory PSI (some) reduction, 14% major page
faults reduction, and 3.74% speedup under memory pressure.

Setup
-----

To show the effect of PLRUS, I run PARSEC3 and SPLASH-2X benchmarks under
below variant systems and measure a few metrics including the runtime of
each workload, number of system-wide major page faults, and system-wide
memory PSI (some).

- orig: v5.18-rc4 based mm-unstable kernel + this patchset, but no DAMON scheme
        applied.
- mprs: Same to 'orig' but artificial memory pressure is induced.
- plrus: Same to 'mprs' but a radically tuned PLRUS scheme is applied to the
         entire physical address space of the system.

For the artificial memory pressure, I set 'memory.limit_in_bytes' to 75%
of the running workload's peak RSS, wait 1 second, remove the pressure by
setting it to 200% of the peak RSS, wait 10 seconds, and repeat the
procedure until the workload finishes[1].  I use zram based swap device. 
The tests are automated[2].

[1] https://github.com/awslabs/damon-tests/blob/next/perf/runners/back/0009_memcg_pressure.sh
[2] https://github.com/awslabs/damon-tests/blob/next/perf/full_once_config.sh

Radically Tuned PLRUS
---------------------

To show effect of PLRUS on the PARSEC3/SPLASH-2X workloads which runs for
no long time, we use radically tuned version of PLRUS.  The version asks
DAMON to do the proactive LRU-lists sorting as below.

1. Find any memory regions shown some accesses (approximately >=20 accesses per
   100 sampling) and prioritize pages of the regions on their LRU lists using
   up to 2% CPU time.  Under the CPU time limit, prioritize regions having
   higher access frequency and kept the access frequency longer first.

2. Find any memory regions shown no access for at least >=5 seconds and
   deprioritize pages of the rgions on their LRU lists using up to 2% CPU time.
   Under the CPU time limit, deprioritize regions that not accessed for longer
   time first.

Results
-------

I repeat the tests 25 times and calculate average of the measured numbers.
The results are as below:

    metric               orig        mprs         plrus        plrus/mprs
    runtime_seconds      190.06      292.83       281.87       0.96
    pgmajfaults          852.55      8769420.00   7525040.00   0.86
    memory_psi_some_us   106911.00   6943420.00   6220920.00   0.90

The first row is for legend.  The first cell shows the metric that the
following cells of the row shows.  Second, third, and fourth cells show
the metrics under the configs shown at the first row of the cell, and the
fifth cell shows the metric under 'plrus' divided by the metric under
'mprs'.  Second row shows the averaged runtime of the workloads in
seconds.  Third row shows the number of system-wide major page faults
while the test was ongoing.  Fourth row shows the system-wide memory
pressure stall for some processes in microseconds while the test was
ongoing.

In short, PLRUS achieves 10% memory PSI (some) reduction, 14% major page
faults reduction, and 3.74% speedup under memory pressure.  We also
confirmed the CPU usage of kdamond was 2.61% of single CPU, which is below
4% as expected.

Sequence of Patches
===================

The first and second patch cleans up DAMON debugfs interface and
DAMOS_PAGEOUT handling code of physical address space monitoring
operations implementation for easier extension of the code.

The thrid and fourth patches implement a new DAMOS action called
'lru_prio', which prioritizes pages under memory regions which have a
user-specified access pattern, and document it, respectively.  The fifth
and sixth patches implement yet another new DAMOS action called
'lru_deprio', which deprioritizes pages under memory regions which have a
user-specified access pattern, and document it, respectively.

The seventh patch implements a static kernel module called
'damon_lru_sort', which utilizes the DAMON-based proactive LRU-lists
sorting under conservatively chosen default parameter.  Finally, the
eighth patch documents 'damon_lru_sort'.


This patch (of 8):

DAMON debugfs interface assumes users will write 'damos_action' value
directly to the 'schemes' file.  This makes adding new 'damos_action' in
the middle of its definition breaks the backward compatibility of DAMON
debugfs interface, as values of some 'damos_action' could be changed.  To
mitigate the situation, this commit adds mappings between the user inputs
and 'damos_action' value and makes DAMON debugfs code uses those.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220613192301.8817-1-sj@kernel.org
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220613192301.8817-2-sj@kernel.orgSigned-off-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>