From nobody Mon May 25 04:33:38 2026 Received: from out-182.mta0.migadu.com (out-182.mta0.migadu.com [91.218.175.182]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A07C6229B12 for ; Tue, 19 May 2026 01:25:48 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=91.218.175.182 ARC-Seal: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1779153951; cv=none; b=q140eFRGTgFBYJJHBqx2UhxLl2N+YF+mvhCPZdz0/rimIjOErQO0BCl2fvF3h+MLL2NWNsDOSZ86LvhegQ8lgrgpHE/yfNt7J0oiC8PGHB5O12TMjvowENtlQFQqW17vC5R5jvNqsuN3AyamyN7+FZlQN0bWgAfyV7OBsdzIUpc= ARC-Message-Signature: i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1779153951; c=relaxed/simple; bh=pjM0WtJxIExEXvpkR2i7tjsUeXGWbhPUaJ3+29q6kLQ=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:Date:Message-ID:MIME-Version; b=d7+rfymcvZCminl1idrNAvI2sEFhmUiYDafyPwYK7bZ3gwDFLTHFsaBg8+n1S2M6b+nOdyqzBE1GSqGuWshRwg/3upVPkDDYKR/F1mIgUxFKEzKZI50VdGTR5CpM/o0K0WcmwEY7PODnoYKfSuXz1xWPqEtK6U39k3hwUaTnOGA= ARC-Authentication-Results: i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=linux.dev; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=linux.dev; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=linux.dev header.i=@linux.dev header.b=Zf8ofgbU; arc=none smtp.client-ip=91.218.175.182 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=linux.dev Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=linux.dev Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=linux.dev header.i=@linux.dev header.b="Zf8ofgbU" X-Report-Abuse: Please report any abuse attempt to abuse@migadu.com and include these headers. DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=linux.dev; s=key1; t=1779153946; h=from:from:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date:message-id:message-id: to:to:cc:cc:mime-version:mime-version: content-transfer-encoding:content-transfer-encoding; bh=/6vG17en364be4oVrc/061pLrqYUD/S8MrGyGe4hKh4=; b=Zf8ofgbU/udYmUnVEAipdw/vDGqJ5paYw532aB40krWQ13PhkAD0tdfoitZ0qbairzlwiA XHv0XbX2GtcCX/3Zkqkb3lNgGFu3xc0I97XBwS8M4vlkoGg+8cG171wTOcTlWnogUyUwXh +INff1Y+khK3iY6kVEOutIw9Mu5UpQw= From: "JP Kobryn (Meta)" To: akpm@linux-foundation.org, vbabka@kernel.org, surenb@google.com, mhocko@suse.com, jackmanb@google.com, hannes@cmpxchg.org, ziy@nvidia.com, linux-mm@kvack.org Cc: usama.arif@linux.dev, kirill@shutemov.name, willy@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kernel-team@meta.com Subject: [PATCH] mm/page_alloc: skip high atomic reservation at or below costly order Date: Mon, 18 May 2026 18:25:32 -0700 Message-ID: <20260519012532.272770-1-jp.kobryn@linux.dev> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Migadu-Flow: FLOW_OUT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" We're seeing a pattern in production where 2MB THP order-9 allocations are failing due to fragmentation and triggering reclaim on systems with plenty of free memory. Over time, the success rate of these THP allocations do not increase at all. Inspecting zone->vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES] via kprobe on compaction_suitable() indicated the given zone had sufficient free pages for order-9 allocations, yet they were going unused. Drilling down into the zone and inspecting /proc/pagetypeinfo revealed why. Order-9 blocks were accumulating in the zone's HighAtomic bucket (while zero were present in Movable). THP is unable to draw blocks from HighAtomic since that bucket is not in the fallback list. The heuristic for reserving pageblocks in HighAtomic is that any atomic allocation greater than order-0 will result in the full pageblock being captured. This means that an order-1 atomic allocation will over-reserve by 256x, a full 512 pageblock. Gate the reservation on order. Skip for allocations at or below PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER. This prevents smaller atomic allocations from reserving entire pageblocks, and significantly helps when THP is in use on a fragmented but otherwise healthy system. Testing was performed using an A/B instagram workload receiving prod traffic. Each side had ~60 hosts with 64G memory. The patch resulted in several gains: Unpatched HighAtomic pageblocks per host: 309-312 (1% of zone or 620MB), ...all order-9 blocks in HighAtomic THP success rate: 1-6% Compaction success rate: 0-2% pgscan_kswapd (total across ~60 hosts, per minute): ~70.2M Atomic order-4+ allocations: 0 Patched HighAtomic pageblocks per host: 1 THP success rate: 44-78% Compaction success rate: 24-47% pgscan_kswapd (total across ~60 hosts, per minute): ~29.9M Atomic order-4+ allocations: 0 Note that for this workload all atomic allocations were order 0-3 originating from the network stack, btrfs, and scheduler. Signed-off-by: JP Kobryn (Meta) --- mm/page_alloc.c | 7 +++++++ 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c index e262d1316259d..45d8f6844f510 100644 --- a/mm/page_alloc.c +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c @@ -3446,6 +3446,13 @@ static void reserve_highatomic_pageblock(struct page= *page, int order, int mt; unsigned long max_managed; =20 + /* + * Don't reserve a pageblock for lower orders. + * Order 1-3 allocs should not capture a huge page size block. + */ + if (order <=3D PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER) + return; + /* * The number reserved as: minimum is 1 pageblock, maximum is * roughly 1% of a zone. But if 1% of a zone falls below a --=20 2.53.0-Meta