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diff --git a/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst b/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e0466f2db --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +.. _swap_numa: + +=========================================== +Automatically bind swap device to numa node +=========================================== + +If the system has more than one swap device and swap device has the node +information, we can make use of this information to decide which swap +device to use in get_swap_pages() to get better performance. + + +How to use this feature +======================= + +Swap device has priority and that decides the order of it to be used. To make +use of automatically binding, there is no need to manipulate priority settings +for swap devices. e.g. on a 2 node machine, assume 2 swap devices swapA and +swapB, with swapA attached to node 0 and swapB attached to node 1, are going +to be swapped on. Simply swapping them on by doing:: + + # swapon /dev/swapA + # swapon /dev/swapB + +Then node 0 will use the two swap devices in the order of swapA then swapB and +node 1 will use the two swap devices in the order of swapB then swapA. Note +that the order of them being swapped on doesn't matter. + +A more complex example on a 4 node machine. Assume 6 swap devices are going to +be swapped on: swapA and swapB are attached to node 0, swapC is attached to +node 1, swapD and swapE are attached to node 2 and swapF is attached to node3. +The way to swap them on is the same as above:: + + # swapon /dev/swapA + # swapon /dev/swapB + # swapon /dev/swapC + # swapon /dev/swapD + # swapon /dev/swapE + # swapon /dev/swapF + +Then node 0 will use them in the order of:: + + swapA/swapB -> swapC -> swapD -> swapE -> swapF + +swapA and swapB will be used in a round robin mode before any other swap device. + +node 1 will use them in the order of:: + + swapC -> swapA -> swapB -> swapD -> swapE -> swapF + +node 2 will use them in the order of:: + + swapD/swapE -> swapA -> swapB -> swapC -> swapF + +Similaly, swapD and swapE will be used in a round robin mode before any +other swap devices. + +node 3 will use them in the order of:: + + swapF -> swapA -> swapB -> swapC -> swapD -> swapE + + +Implementation details +====================== + +The current code uses a priority based list, swap_avail_list, to decide +which swap device to use and if multiple swap devices share the same +priority, they are used round robin. This change here replaces the single +global swap_avail_list with a per-numa-node list, i.e. for each numa node, +it sees its own priority based list of available swap devices. Swap +device's priority can be promoted on its matching node's swap_avail_list. + +The current swap device's priority is set as: user can set a >=0 value, +or the system will pick one starting from -1 then downwards. The priority +value in the swap_avail_list is the negated value of the swap device's +due to plist being sorted from low to high. The new policy doesn't change +the semantics for priority >=0 cases, the previous starting from -1 then +downwards now becomes starting from -2 then downwards and -1 is reserved +as the promoted value. So if multiple swap devices are attached to the same +node, they will all be promoted to priority -1 on that node's plist and will +be used round robin before any other swap devices. |