Re: [PATCH] change global zonelist order v4 [0/2]

[Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>]

On Fri, 4 May 2007, Jesse Barnes wrote:

> I think the idea is to avoid exhausting ZONE_DMA on some NUMA boxes by 
> ordering the fallback list first by zone, then by node distance (e.g. 
> ZONE_NORMAL of local node, then ZONE_NORMAL of next nearest node etc., 
> followed by ZONE_DMA of local node, ZONE_DMA of next nearest node, etc.).

Maybe it would be cleaner to setup a DMA and DMA32 "node" up and define 
them at a certain distance to the rest of the nodes that only contain 
ZONE_NORMAL (or the zone that is replicated on all nodes). Then we would 
have that effect without reworking zone list generation. Plus in the long 
run we may then be able to get to 1 zone per node avoiding the 
difficulties coming zone fallback altogether.

> Another option would be to make this behavior automatic if both ZONE_DMA 
> and ZONE_NORMAL had pages.  I initially wrote this stuff with the idea 
> that machines that really needed it would have all their memory in 
> ZONE_DMA, but obviously that's not the case, so some more smarts are 
> needed.

I think what would work is to first setup nodes that use the highest zone. 
Then add virtual nodes for the lower zones that may only exist on a single 
node.

I.e. a 4 node x86_64 box may have

Node
0	ZONE_NORMAL
1	ZONE_NORMAL
2	ZONE_NORMAL
3	ZONE_NORMAL
4	ZONE_DMA32
5	[additional ZONE_DMA32 if zone DMA32 is split over multiple nodes]
6	ZONE_DMA

The SLIT information can be used to control how the nodes fallback to the 
DMA32 nodes on 4 and 5. Node 6 would be given a very high SLIT distance so 
that it would be used only if an actual __GFP_DMA occurs or the system 
really runs into memory difficulties.

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