summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst80
1 files changed, 80 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst b/Documentation/vm/swap_numa.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..e0466f2db8fa
--- /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.