zsmalloc: prefer the the original page's node for compressed data
Currently, zsmalloc, zswap's and zram's backend memory allocator, does not
enforce any policy for the allocation of memory for the compressed data,
instead just adopting the memory policy of the task entering reclaim, or
the default policy (prefer local node) if no such policy is specified.
This can lead to several pathological behaviors in multi-node NUMA
systems:
1. Systems with CXL-based memory tiering can encounter the following
inversion with zswap/zram: the coldest pages demoted to the CXL tier
can return to the high tier when they are reclaimed to compressed swap,
creating memory pressure on the high tier.
2. Consider a direct reclaimer scanning nodes in order of allocation
preference. If it ventures into remote nodes, the memory it compresses
there should stay there. Trying to shift those contents over to the
reclaiming thread's preferred node further *increases* its local
pressure, and provoking more spills. The remote node is also the most
likely to refault this data again. This undesirable behavior was
pointed out by Johannes Weiner in [1].
3. For zswap writeback, the zswap entries are organized in
node-specific LRUs, based on the node placement of the original pages,
allowing for targeted zswap writeback for specific nodes.
However, the compressed data of a zswap entry can be placed on a
different node from the LRU it is placed on. This means that reclaim
targeted at one node might not free up memory used for zswap entries in
that node, but instead reclaiming memory in a different node.
All of these issues will be resolved if the compressed data go to the same
node as the original page. This patch encourages this behavior by having
zswap and zram pass the node of the original page to zsmalloc, and have
zsmalloc prefer the specified node if we need to allocate new (zs)pages
for the compressed data.
Note that we are not strictly binding the allocation to the preferred
node. We still allow the allocation to fall back to other nodes when the
preferred node is full, or if we have zspages with slots available on a
different node. This is OK, and still a strict improvement over the
status quo:
1. On a system with demotion enabled, we will generally prefer
demotions over compressed swapping, and only swap when pages have
already gone to the lowest tier. This patch should achieve the desired
effect for the most part.
2. If the preferred node is out of memory, letting the compressed data
going to other nodes can be better than the alternative (OOMs, keeping
cold memory unreclaimed, disk swapping, etc.).
3. If the allocation go to a separate node because we have a zspage
with slots available, at least we're not creating extra immediate
memory pressure (since the space is already allocated).
3. While there can be mixings, we generally reclaim pages in same-node
batches, which encourage zspage grouping that is more likely to go to
the right node.
4. A strict binding would require partitioning zsmalloc by node, which
is more complicated, and more prone to regression, since it reduces the
storage density of zsmalloc. We need to evaluate the tradeoff and
benchmark carefully before adopting such an involved solution.
[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/
20250331165306.GC2110528@cmpxchg.org/
[senozhatsky@chromium.org: coding-style fixes]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/mnvexa7kseswglcqbhlot4zg3b3la2ypv2rimdl5mh5glbmhvz@wi6bgqn47hge
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250402204416.3435994-1-nphamcs@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Nhat Pham <nphamcs@gmail.com>
Suggested-by: Gregory Price <gourry@gourry.net>
Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Chengming Zhou <chengming.zhou@linux.dev>
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <senozhatsky@chromium.org> [zram, zsmalloc]
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Acked-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry.ahmed@linux.dev> [zswap/zsmalloc]
Cc: "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Joanthan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>