[PATCH v4 3/4] lazy tlb: shoot lazies, a non-refcounting lazy tlb option

[Nicholas Piggin]

On big systems, the mm refcount can become highly contented when doing
a lot of context switching with threaded applications (particularly
switching between the idle thread and an application thread).

Abandoning lazy tlb slows switching down quite a bit in the important
user->idle->user cases, so instead implement a non-refcounted scheme
that causes __mmdrop() to IPI all CPUs in the mm_cpumask and shoot down
any remaining lazy ones.

Shootdown IPIs are some concern, but they have not been observed to be
a big problem with this scheme (the powerpc implementation generated
314 additional interrupts on a 144 CPU system during a kernel compile).
There are a number of strategies that could be employed to reduce IPIs
if they turn out to be a problem for some workload.

Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com>
---
 arch/Kconfig  | 13 +++++++++++++
 kernel/fork.c | 51 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 64 insertions(+)

diff --git a/arch/Kconfig b/arch/Kconfig
index 1cff045cdde6..f8136c893991 100644
--- a/arch/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/Kconfig
@@ -421,6 +421,19 @@ config ARCH_WANT_IRQS_OFF_ACTIVATE_MM
 # Use normal mm refcounting for MMU_LAZY_TLB kernel thread references.
 config MMU_LAZY_TLB_REFCOUNT
 	def_bool y
+	depends on !MMU_LAZY_TLB_SHOOTDOWN
+
+# Instead of refcounting the lazy mm struct for kernel thread references
+# (which can cause contention with multi-threaded apps on large multiprocessor
+# systems), this option causes __mmdrop to IPI all CPUs in the mm_cpumask and
+# switch to init_mm if they were using the to-be-freed mm as the lazy tlb. To
+# implement this, architectures must use _lazy_tlb variants of mm refcounting
+# when releasing kernel thread mm references, and mm_cpumask must include at
+# least all possible CPUs in which the mm might be lazy, at the time of the
+# final mmdrop. mmgrab/mmdrop in arch/ code must be switched to _lazy_tlb
+# postfix as necessary.
+config MMU_LAZY_TLB_SHOOTDOWN
+	bool
 
 config ARCH_HAVE_NMI_SAFE_CMPXCHG
 	bool
diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index dc06afd725cb..8085ff33c7f6 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -674,6 +674,53 @@ static void check_mm(struct mm_struct *mm)
 #define allocate_mm()	(kmem_cache_alloc(mm_cachep, GFP_KERNEL))
 #define free_mm(mm)	(kmem_cache_free(mm_cachep, (mm)))
 
+static void do_shoot_lazy_tlb(void *arg)
+{
+	struct mm_struct *mm = arg;
+
+	if (current->active_mm == mm) {
+		WARN_ON_ONCE(current->mm);
+		current->active_mm = &init_mm;
+		switch_mm(mm, &init_mm, current);
+	}
+}
+
+static void do_check_lazy_tlb(void *arg)
+{
+	struct mm_struct *mm = arg;
+
+	WARN_ON_ONCE(current->active_mm == mm);
+}
+
+static void shoot_lazy_tlbs(struct mm_struct *mm)
+{
+	if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_MMU_LAZY_TLB_SHOOTDOWN)) {
+		/*
+		 * IPI overheads have not found to be expensive, but they could
+		 * be reduced in a number of possible ways, for example (in
+		 * roughly increasing order of complexity):
+		 * - A batch of mms requiring IPIs could be gathered and freed
+		 *   at once.
+		 * - CPUs could store their active mm somewhere that can be
+		 *   remotely checked without a lock, to filter out
+		 *   false-positives in the cpumask.
+		 * - After mm_users or mm_count reaches zero, switching away
+		 *   from the mm could clear mm_cpumask to reduce some IPIs
+		 *   (some batching or delaying would help).
+		 * - A delayed freeing and RCU-like quiescing sequence based on
+		 *   mm switching to avoid IPIs completely.
+		 */
+		on_each_cpu_mask(mm_cpumask(mm), do_shoot_lazy_tlb, (void *)mm, 1);
+		if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM))
+			on_each_cpu(do_check_lazy_tlb, (void *)mm, 1);
+	} else {
+		/*
+		 * In this case, lazy tlb mms are refounted and would not reach
+		 * __mmdrop until all CPUs have switched away and mmdrop()ed.
+		 */
+	}
+}
+
 /*
  * Called when the last reference to the mm
  * is dropped: either by a lazy thread or by
@@ -683,6 +730,10 @@ void __mmdrop(struct mm_struct *mm)
 {
 	BUG_ON(mm == &init_mm);
 	WARN_ON_ONCE(mm == current->mm);
+
+	/* Ensure no CPUs are using this as their lazy tlb mm */
+	shoot_lazy_tlbs(mm);
+
 	WARN_ON_ONCE(mm == current->active_mm);
 	mm_free_pgd(mm);
 	destroy_context(mm);
-- 
2.23.0