[PATCH] x86-64: fake numa for cpusets document

Create a document to explain how to use numa=fake in conjunction with cpusets
for coarse memory resource management.

An attempt to get more awareness and testing for this feature.

Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 66 insertions, 0 deletions

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+Using numa=fake and CPUSets for Resource Management
+Written by David Rientjes <rientjes@cs.washington.edu>
+
+This document describes how the numa=fake x86_64 command-line option can be used
+in conjunction with cpusets for coarse memory management.  Using this feature,
+you can create fake NUMA nodes that represent contiguous chunks of memory and
+assign them to cpusets and their attached tasks.  This is a way of limiting the
+amount of system memory that are available to a certain class of tasks.
+
+For more information on the features of cpusets, see Documentation/cpusets.txt.
+There are a number of different configurations you can use for your needs.  For
+more information on the numa=fake command line option and its various ways of
+configuring fake nodes, see Documentation/x86_64/boot-options.txt.
+
+For the purposes of this introduction, we'll assume a very primitive NUMA
+emulation setup of "numa=fake=4*512,".  This will split our system memory into
+four equal chunks of 512M each that we can now use to assign to cpusets.  As
+you become more familiar with using this combination for resource control,
+you'll determine a better setup to minimize the number of nodes you have to deal
+with.
+
+A machine may be split as follows with "numa=fake=4*512," as reported by dmesg:
+
+        Faking node 0 at 0000000000000000-0000000020000000 (512MB)
+        Faking node 1 at 0000000020000000-0000000040000000 (512MB)
+        Faking node 2 at 0000000040000000-0000000060000000 (512MB)
+        Faking node 3 at 0000000060000000-0000000080000000 (512MB)
+        ...
+        On node 0 totalpages: 130975
+        On node 1 totalpages: 131072
+        On node 2 totalpages: 131072
+        On node 3 totalpages: 131072
+
+Now following the instructions for mounting the cpusets filesystem from
+Documentation/cpusets.txt, you can assign fake nodes (i.e. contiguous memory
+address spaces) to individual cpusets:
+
+        [root@xroads /]# mkdir exampleset
+        [root@xroads /]# mount -t cpuset none exampleset
+        [root@xroads /]# mkdir exampleset/ddset
+        [root@xroads /]# cd exampleset/ddset
+        [root@xroads /exampleset/ddset]# echo 0-1 > cpus
+        [root@xroads /exampleset/ddset]# echo 0-1 > mems
+
+Now this cpuset, 'ddset', will only allowed access to fake nodes 0 and 1 for
+memory allocations (1G).
+
+You can now assign tasks to these cpusets to limit the memory resources
+available to them according to the fake nodes assigned as mems:
+
+        [root@xroads /exampleset/ddset]# echo $$ > tasks
+        [root@xroads /exampleset/ddset]# dd if=/dev/zero of=tmp bs=1024 count=1G
+        [1] 13425
+
+Notice the difference between the system memory usage as reported by
+/proc/meminfo between the restricted cpuset case above and the unrestricted
+case (i.e. running the same 'dd' command without assigning it to a fake NUMA
+cpuset):
+                                Unrestricted    Restricted
+        MemTotal:               3091900 kB      3091900 kB
+        MemFree:                  42113 kB      1513236 kB
+
+This allows for coarse memory management for the tasks you assign to particular
+cpusets.  Since cpusets can form a hierarchy, you can create some pretty
+interesting combinations of use-cases for various classes of tasks for your
+memory management needs.