Specifying a non-zero value for a new struct kmem_cache_args field
sheaf_capacity will setup a caching layer of percpu arrays called
sheaves of given capacity for the created cache.
Allocations from the cache will allocate via the percpu sheaves (main or
spare) as long as they have no NUMA node preference. Frees will also
refill one of the sheaves.
When both percpu sheaves are found empty during an allocation, an empty
sheaf may be replaced with a full one from the per-node barn. If none
are available and the allocation is allowed to block, an empty sheaf is
refilled from slab(s) by an internal bulk alloc operation. When both
percpu sheaves are full during freeing, the barn can replace a full one
with an empty one, unless over a full sheaves limit. In that case a
sheaf is flushed to slab(s) by an internal bulk free operation. Flushing
sheaves and barns is also wired to the existing cpu flushing and cache
shrinking operations.
The sheaves do not distinguish NUMA locality of the cached objects. If
an allocation is requested with kmem_cache_alloc_node() with a specific
node (not NUMA_NO_NODE), sheaves are bypassed.
The bulk operations exposed to slab users also try to utilize the
sheaves as long as the necessary (full or empty) sheaves are available
on the cpu or in the barn. Once depleted, they will fallback to bulk
alloc/free to slabs directly to avoid double copying.
Sysfs stat counters alloc_cpu_sheaf and free_cpu_sheaf count objects
allocated or freed using the sheaves. Counters sheaf_refill,
sheaf_flush_main and sheaf_flush_other count objects filled or flushed
from or to slab pages, and can be used to assess how effective the
caching is. The refill and flush operations will also count towards the
usual alloc_fastpath/slowpath, free_fastpath/slowpath and other
counters.
Access to the percpu sheaves is protected by local_lock_irqsave()
operations, each per-NUMA-node barn has a spin_lock.
A current limitation is that when slub_debug is enabled for a cache with
percpu sheaves, the objects in the array are considered as allocated from
the slub_debug perspective, and the alloc/free debugging hooks occur
when moving the objects between the array and slab pages. This means
that e.g. an use-after-free that occurs for an object cached in the
array is undetected. Collected alloc/free stacktraces might also be less
useful. This limitation could be changed in the future.
On the other hand, KASAN, kmemcg and other hooks are executed on actual
allocations and frees by kmem_cache users even if those use the array,
so their debugging or accounting accuracy should be unaffected.