zswap: same-filled pages handling

Zswap is a cache which compresses the pages that are being swapped out
and stores them into a dynamically allocated RAM-based memory pool.
Experiments have shown that around 10-20% of pages stored in zswap are
same-filled pages (i.e.  contents of the page are all same), but these
pages are handled as normal pages by compressing and allocating memory
in the pool.

This patch adds a check in zswap_frontswap_store() to identify
same-filled page before compression of the page.  If the page is a
same-filled page, set zswap_entry.length to zero, save the same-filled
value and skip the compression of the page and alloction of memory in
zpool.  In zswap_frontswap_load(), check if value of zswap_entry.length
is zero corresponding to the page to be loaded.  If zswap_entry.length
is zero, fill the page with same-filled value.  This saves the
decompression time during load.

On a ARM Quad Core 32-bit device with 1.5GB RAM by launching and
relaunching different applications, out of ~64000 pages stored in zswap,
~11000 pages were same-value filled pages (including zero-filled pages)
and ~9000 pages were zero-filled pages.

An average of 17% of pages(including zero-filled pages) in zswap are
same-value filled pages and 14% pages are zero-filled pages.  An average
of 3% of pages are same-filled non-zero pages.

The below table shows the execution time profiling with the patch.

                            Baseline    With patch  % Improvement
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
  *Zswap Store Time           26.5ms       18ms          32%
   (of same value pages)
  *Zswap Load Time
   (of same value pages)      25.5ms       13ms          49%
  -----------------------------------------------------------------

On Ubuntu PC with 2GB RAM, while executing kernel build and other test
scripts and running multimedia applications, out of 360000 pages stored
in zswap 78000(~22%) of pages were found to be same-value filled pages
(including zero-filled pages) and 64000(~17%) are zero-filled pages.  So
an average of %5 of pages are same-filled non-zero pages.

The below table shows the execution time profiling with the patch.

                            Baseline    With patch  % Improvement
  -----------------------------------------------------------------
  *Zswap Store Time           91ms        74ms           19%
   (of same value pages)
  *Zswap Load Time            50ms        7.5ms          85%
   (of same value pages)
  -----------------------------------------------------------------

*The execution times may vary with test device used.

Dan said:

: I did test this patch out this week, and I added some instrumentation to
: check the performance impact, and tested with a small program to try to
: check the best and worst cases.
:
: When doing a lot of swap where all (or almost all) pages are same-value, I
: found this patch does save both time and space, significantly.  The exact
: improvement in time and space depends on which compressor is being used,
: but roughly agrees with the numbers you listed.
:
: In the worst case situation, where all (or almost all) pages have the
: same-value *except* the final long (meaning, zswap will check each long on
: the entire page but then still have to pass the page to the compressor),
: the same-value check is around 10-15% of the total time spent in
: zswap_frontswap_store().  That's a not-insignificant amount of time, but
: it's not huge.  Considering that most systems will probably be swapping
: pages that aren't similar to the worst case (although I don't have any
: data to know that), I'd say the improvement is worth the possible
: worst-case performance impact.

[srividya.dr@samsung.com: add memset_l instead of for loop]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20171018104832epcms5p1b2232e2236258de3d03d1344dde9fce0@epcms5p1
Signed-off-by: Srividya Desireddy <srividya.dr@samsung.com>
Acked-by: Dan Streetman <ddstreet@ieee.org>
Cc: Seth Jennings <sjenning@redhat.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: Dinakar Reddy Pathireddy <dinakar.p@samsung.com>
Cc: SHARAN ALLUR <sharan.allur@samsung.com>
Cc: RAJIB BASU <rajib.basu@samsung.com>
Cc: JUHUN KIM <juhunkim@samsung.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Timofey Titovets <nefelim4ag@gmail.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 66 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/mm/zswap.c b/mm/zswap.c
index d39581a076c3..1133b4ceb72e 100644
--- a/mm/zswap.c
+++ b/mm/zswap.c
@@ -49,6 +49,8 @@
 static u64 zswap_pool_total_size;
 /* The number of compressed pages currently stored in zswap */
 static atomic_t zswap_stored_pages = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
+/* The number of same-value filled pages currently stored in zswap */
+static atomic_t zswap_same_filled_pages = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
 
 /*
  * The statistics below are not protected from concurrent access for
@@ -116,6 +118,11 @@ module_param_cb(zpool, &zswap_zpool_param_ops, &zswap_zpool_type, 0644);
 static unsigned int zswap_max_pool_percent = 20;
 module_param_named(max_pool_percent, zswap_max_pool_percent, uint, 0644);
 
+/* Enable/disable handling same-value filled pages (enabled by default) */
+static bool zswap_same_filled_pages_enabled = true;
+module_param_named(same_filled_pages_enabled, zswap_same_filled_pages_enabled,
+                   bool, 0644);
+
 /*********************************
 * data structures
 **********************************/
@@ -145,9 +152,10 @@ struct zswap_pool {
  *            be held while changing the refcount.  Since the lock must
  *            be held, there is no reason to also make refcount atomic.
  * length - the length in bytes of the compressed page data.  Needed during
- *          decompression
+ *          decompression. For a same value filled page length is 0.
  * pool - the zswap_pool the entry's data is in
  * handle - zpool allocation handle that stores the compressed page data
+ * value - value of the same-value filled pages which have same content
  */
 struct zswap_entry {
         struct rb_node rbnode;
@@ -155,7 +163,10 @@ struct zswap_entry {
         int refcount;
         unsigned int length;
         struct zswap_pool *pool;
-        unsigned long handle;
+        union {
+                unsigned long handle;
+                unsigned long value;
+        };
 };
 
 struct zswap_header {
@@ -320,8 +331,12 @@ static void zswap_rb_erase(struct rb_root *root, struct zswap_entry *entry)
  */
 static void zswap_free_entry(struct zswap_entry *entry)
 {
-        zpool_free(entry->pool->zpool, entry->handle);
-        zswap_pool_put(entry->pool);
+        if (!entry->length)
+                atomic_dec(&zswap_same_filled_pages);
+        else {
+                zpool_free(entry->pool->zpool, entry->handle);
+                zswap_pool_put(entry->pool);
+        }
         zswap_entry_cache_free(entry);
         atomic_dec(&zswap_stored_pages);
         zswap_update_total_size();
@@ -953,6 +968,28 @@ static int zswap_shrink(void)
         return ret;
 }
 
+static int zswap_is_page_same_filled(void *ptr, unsigned long *value)
+{
+        unsigned int pos;
+        unsigned long *page;
+
+        page = (unsigned long *)ptr;
+        for (pos = 1; pos < PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(*page); pos++) {
+                if (page[pos] != page[0])
+                        return 0;
+        }
+        *value = page[0];
+        return 1;
+}
+
+static void zswap_fill_page(void *ptr, unsigned long value)
+{
+        unsigned long *page;
+
+        page = (unsigned long *)ptr;
+        memset_l(page, value, PAGE_SIZE / sizeof(unsigned long));
+}
+
 /*********************************
 * frontswap hooks
 **********************************/
@@ -965,7 +1002,7 @@ static int zswap_frontswap_store(unsigned type, pgoff_t offset,
         struct crypto_comp *tfm;
         int ret;
         unsigned int dlen = PAGE_SIZE, len;
-        unsigned long handle;
+        unsigned long handle, value;
         char *buf;
         u8 *src, *dst;
         struct zswap_header *zhdr;
@@ -993,6 +1030,19 @@ static int zswap_frontswap_store(unsigned type, pgoff_t offset,
                 goto reject;
         }
 
+        if (zswap_same_filled_pages_enabled) {
+                src = kmap_atomic(page);
+                if (zswap_is_page_same_filled(src, &value)) {
+                        kunmap_atomic(src);
+                        entry->offset = offset;
+                        entry->length = 0;
+                        entry->value = value;
+                        atomic_inc(&zswap_same_filled_pages);
+                        goto insert_entry;
+                }
+                kunmap_atomic(src);
+        }
+
         /* if entry is successfully added, it keeps the reference */
         entry->pool = zswap_pool_current_get();
         if (!entry->pool) {
@@ -1037,6 +1087,7 @@ static int zswap_frontswap_store(unsigned type, pgoff_t offset,
         entry->handle = handle;
         entry->length = dlen;
 
+insert_entry:
         /* map */
         spin_lock(&tree->lock);
         do {
@@ -1089,6 +1140,13 @@ static int zswap_frontswap_load(unsigned type, pgoff_t offset,
         }
         spin_unlock(&tree->lock);
 
+        if (!entry->length) {
+                dst = kmap_atomic(page);
+                zswap_fill_page(dst, entry->value);
+                kunmap_atomic(dst);
+                goto freeentry;
+        }
+
         /* decompress */
         dlen = PAGE_SIZE;
         src = (u8 *)zpool_map_handle(entry->pool->zpool, entry->handle,
@@ -1101,6 +1159,7 @@ static int zswap_frontswap_load(unsigned type, pgoff_t offset,
         zpool_unmap_handle(entry->pool->zpool, entry->handle);
         BUG_ON(ret);
 
+freeentry:
         spin_lock(&tree->lock);
         zswap_entry_put(tree, entry);
         spin_unlock(&tree->lock);
@@ -1209,6 +1268,8 @@ static int __init zswap_debugfs_init(void)
                         zswap_debugfs_root, &zswap_pool_total_size);
         debugfs_create_atomic_t("stored_pages", S_IRUGO,
                         zswap_debugfs_root, &zswap_stored_pages);
+        debugfs_create_atomic_t("same_filled_pages", 0444,
+                        zswap_debugfs_root, &zswap_same_filled_pages);
 
         return 0;
 }