rcu: Add basic support for kfree_rcu() batching

Recently a discussion about stability and performance of a system
involving a high rate of kfree_rcu() calls surfaced on the list [1]
which led to another discussion how to prepare for this situation.

This patch adds basic batching support for kfree_rcu(). It is "basic"
because we do none of the slab management, dynamic allocation, code
moving or any of the other things, some of which previous attempts did
[2]. These fancier improvements can be follow-up patches and there are
different ideas being discussed in those regards. This is an effort to
start simple, and build up from there. In the future, an extension to
use kfree_bulk and possibly per-slab batching could be done to further
improve performance due to cache-locality and slab-specific bulk free
optimizations. By using an array of pointers, the worker thread
processing the work would need to read lesser data since it does not
need to deal with large rcu_head(s) any longer.

Torture tests follow in the next patch and show improvements of around
5x reduction in number of  grace periods on a 16 CPU system. More
details and test data are in that patch.

There is an implication with rcu_barrier() with this patch. Since the
kfree_rcu() calls can be batched, and may not be handed yet to the RCU
machinery in fact, the monitor may not have even run yet to do the
queue_rcu_work(), there seems no easy way of implementing rcu_barrier()
to wait for those kfree_rcu()s that are already made. So this means a
kfree_rcu() followed by an rcu_barrier() does not imply that memory will
be freed once rcu_barrier() returns.

Another implication is higher active memory usage (although not
run-away..) until the kfree_rcu() flooding ends, in comparison to
without batching. More details about this are in the second patch which
adds an rcuperf test.

Finally, in the near future we will get rid of kfree_rcu() special casing
within RCU such as in rcu_do_batch and switch everything to just
batching. Currently we don't do that since timer subsystem is not yet up
and we cannot schedule the kfree_rcu() monitor as the timer subsystem's
lock are not initialized. That would also mean getting rid of
kfree_call_rcu_nobatch() entirely.

[1] http://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190723035725-mutt-send-email-mst@kernel.org
[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/19/824

Cc: kernel-team@android.com
Cc: kernel-team@lge.com
Co-developed-by: Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@lge.com>
Signed-off-by: Byungchul Park <byungchul.park@lge.com>
Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org>
[ paulmck: Applied 0day and Paul Walmsley feedback on ->monitor_todo. ]
[ paulmck: Make it work during early boot. ]
[ paulmck: Add a crude early boot self-test. ]
[ paulmck: Style adjustments and experimental docbook structure header. ]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/alpine.DEB.2.21.9999.1908161931110.32497@viisi.sifive.com/T/#me9956f66cb611b95d26ae92700e1d901f46e8c59
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/rcutiny.h b/include/linux/rcutiny.h
index 37b6f0c2b79d..1bd166aab6f3 100644
--- a/include/linux/rcutiny.h
+++ b/include/linux/rcutiny.h
@@ -39,6 +39,11 @@ static inline void kfree_call_rcu(struct rcu_head *head, rcu_callback_t func)
 	call_rcu(head, func);
 }
 
+static inline void kfree_call_rcu_nobatch(struct rcu_head *head, rcu_callback_t func)
+{
+	call_rcu(head, func);
+}
+
 void rcu_qs(void);
 
 static inline void rcu_softirq_qs(void)
@@ -85,6 +90,7 @@ static inline void rcu_scheduler_starting(void) { }
 static inline void rcu_end_inkernel_boot(void) { }
 static inline bool rcu_is_watching(void) { return true; }
 static inline void rcu_momentary_dyntick_idle(void) { }
+static inline void kfree_rcu_scheduler_running(void) { }
 
 /* Avoid RCU read-side critical sections leaking across. */
 static inline void rcu_all_qs(void) { barrier(); }