mm/mempolicy: add MPOL_PREFERRED_MANY for multiple preferred nodes

Patch series "Introduce multi-preference mempolicy", v7.

This patch series introduces the concept of the MPOL_PREFERRED_MANY
mempolicy.  This mempolicy mode can be used with either the
set_mempolicy(2) or mbind(2) interfaces.  Like the MPOL_PREFERRED
interface, it allows an application to set a preference for nodes which
will fulfil memory allocation requests.  Unlike the MPOL_PREFERRED mode,
it takes a set of nodes.  Like the MPOL_BIND interface, it works over a
set of nodes.  Unlike MPOL_BIND, it will not cause a SIGSEGV or invoke the
OOM killer if those preferred nodes are not available.

Along with these patches are patches for libnuma, numactl, numademo, and
memhog.  They still need some polish, but can be found here:
https://gitlab.com/bwidawsk/numactl/-/tree/prefer-many It allows new
usage: `numactl -P 0,3,4`

The goal of the new mode is to enable some use-cases when using tiered memory
usage models which I've lovingly named.

1a. The Hare - The interconnect is fast enough to meet bandwidth and
    latency requirements allowing preference to be given to all nodes with
    "fast" memory.
1b. The Indiscriminate Hare - An application knows it wants fast
    memory (or perhaps slow memory), but doesn't care which node it runs
    on.  The application can prefer a set of nodes and then xpu bind to
    the local node (cpu, accelerator, etc).  This reverses the nodes are
    chosen today where the kernel attempts to use local memory to the CPU
    whenever possible.  This will attempt to use the local accelerator to
    the memory.
2.  The Tortoise - The administrator (or the application itself) is
    aware it only needs slow memory, and so can prefer that.

Much of this is almost achievable with the bind interface, but the bind
interface suffers from an inability to fallback to another set of nodes if
binding fails to all nodes in the nodemask.

Like MPOL_BIND a nodemask is given. Inherently this removes ordering from the
preference.

> /* Set first two nodes as preferred in an 8 node system. */
> const unsigned long nodes = 0x3
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY, &nodes, 8);

> /* Mimic interleave policy, but have fallback *.
> const unsigned long nodes = 0xaa
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY, &nodes, 8);

Some internal discussion took place around the interface. There are two
alternatives which we have discussed, plus one I stuck in:

1. Ordered list of nodes.  Currently it's believed that the added
   complexity is nod needed for expected usecases.
2. A flag for bind to allow falling back to other nodes.  This
   confuses the notion of binding and is less flexible than the current
   solution.
3. Create flags or new modes that helps with some ordering.  This
   offers both a friendlier API as well as a solution for more customized
   usage.  It's unknown if it's worth the complexity to support this.
   Here is sample code for how this might work:

> // Prefer specific nodes for some something wacky
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY, 0x17c, 1024);
>
> // Default
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY | MPOL_F_PREFER_ORDER_SOCKET, NULL, 0);
> // which is the same as
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_DEFAULT, NULL, 0);
>
> // The Hare
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY | MPOL_F_PREFER_ORDER_TYPE, NULL, 0);
>
> // The Tortoise
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY | MPOL_F_PREFER_ORDER_TYPE_REV, NULL, 0);
>
> // Prefer the fast memory of the first two sockets
> set_mempolicy(MPOL_PREFER_MANY | MPOL_F_PREFER_ORDER_TYPE, -1, 2);
>

This patch (of 5):

The NUMA APIs currently allow passing in a "preferred node" as a single
bit set in a nodemask.  If more than one bit it set, bits after the first
are ignored.

This single node is generally OK for location-based NUMA where memory
being allocated will eventually be operated on by a single CPU.  However,
in systems with multiple memory types, folks want to target a *type* of
memory instead of a location.  For instance, someone might want some
high-bandwidth memory but do not care about the CPU next to which it is
allocated.  Or, they want a cheap, high capacity allocation and want to
target all NUMA nodes which have persistent memory in volatile mode.  In
both of these cases, the application wants to target a *set* of nodes, but
does not want strict MPOL_BIND behavior as that could lead to OOM killer
or SIGSEGV.

So add MPOL_PREFERRED_MANY policy to support the multiple preferred nodes
requirement.  This is not a pie-in-the-sky dream for an API.  This was a
response to a specific ask of more than one group at Intel.  Specifically:

1. There are existing libraries that target memory types such as
   https://github.com/memkind/memkind.  These are known to suffer from
   SIGSEGV's when memory is low on targeted memory "kinds" that span more
   than one node.  The MCDRAM on a Xeon Phi in "Cluster on Die" mode is an
   example of this.

2. Volatile-use persistent memory users want to have a memory policy
   which is targeted at either "cheap and slow" (PMEM) or "expensive and
   fast" (DRAM).  However, they do not want to experience allocation
   failures when the targeted type is unavailable.

3. Allocate-then-run.  Generally, we let the process scheduler decide
   on which physical CPU to run a task.  That location provides a default
   allocation policy, and memory availability is not generally considered
   when placing tasks.  For situations where memory is valuable and
   constrained, some users want to allocate memory first, *then* allocate
   close compute resources to the allocation.  This is the reverse of the
   normal (CPU) model.  Accelerators such as GPUs that operate on
   core-mm-managed memory are interested in this model.

A check is added in sanitize_mpol_flags() to not permit 'prefer_many'
policy to be used for now, and will be removed in later patch after all
implementations for 'prefer_many' are ready, as suggested by Michal Hocko.

[mhocko@kernel.org: suggest to refine policy_node/policy_nodemask handling]

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1627970362-61305-1-git-send-email-feng.tang@intel.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200630212517.308045-4-ben.widawsky@intel.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1627970362-61305-2-git-send-email-feng.tang@intel.com
Co-developed-by: Ben Widawsky <ben.widawsky@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Ben Widawsky <ben.widawsky@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Cc: Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>b
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h b/include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h
index 19a00bc7fe86..046d0ccba4cd 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/mempolicy.h
@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ enum {
 	MPOL_BIND,
 	MPOL_INTERLEAVE,
 	MPOL_LOCAL,
+	MPOL_PREFERRED_MANY,
 	MPOL_MAX,	/* always last member of enum */
 };