mm: disable zone_reclaim_mode by default · torvalds/linux@4f9b16a · GitHub

disable zone_reclaim_mode by default · torvalds/linux@4f9b16a · GitHub Permalink

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When it was introduced, zone_reclaim_mode made sense as NUMA distances
punished and workloads were generally partitioned to fit into a NUMA
node.  NUMA machines are now common but few of the workloads are
NUMA-aware and it's routine to see major performance degradation due to
zone_reclaim_mode being enabled but relatively few can identify the
problem.

Those that require zone_reclaim_mode are likely to be able to detect
when it needs to be enabled and tune appropriately so lets have a
sensible default for the bulk of users.

This patch (of 2):

zone_reclaim_mode causes processes to prefer reclaiming memory from
local node instead of spilling over to other nodes.  This made sense
initially when NUMA machines were almost exclusively HPC and the
workload was partitioned into nodes.  The NUMA penalties were
sufficiently high to justify reclaiming the memory.  On current machines
and workloads it is often the case that zone_reclaim_mode destroys
performance but not all users know how to detect this.  Favour the
common case and disable it by default.  Users that are sophisticated
enough to know they need zone_reclaim_mode will detect it.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Zhang Yanfei <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Lameter <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>