mutex: Make more scalable by doing less atomic operations

Date	Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:37:57 -0400

In the __mutex_lock_common() function, an initial entry into
the lock slow path will cause two atomic_xchg instructions to be
issued. Together with the atomic decrement in the fast path, a total
of three atomic read-modify-write instructions will be issued in
rapid succession. This can cause a lot of cache bouncing when many
tasks are trying to acquire the mutex at the same time.

This patch will reduce the number of atomic_xchg instructions used by
checking the counter value first before issuing the instruction. The
atomic_read() function is just a simple memory read. The atomic_xchg()
function, on the other hand, can be up to 2 order of magnitude or even
more in cost when compared with atomic_read(). By using atomic_read()
to check the value first before calling atomic_xchg(), we can avoid a
lot of unnecessary cache coherency traffic. The only downside with this
change is that a task on the slow path will have a tiny bit
less chance of getting the mutex when competing with another task
in the fast path.

The same is true for the atomic_cmpxchg() function in the
mutex-spin-on-owner loop. So an atomic_read() is also performed before
calling atomic_cmpxchg().

The mutex locking and unlocking code for the x86 architecture can allow
any negative number to be used in the mutex count to indicate that some
tasks are waiting for the mutex. I am not so sure if that is the case
for the other architectures. So the default is to avoid atomic_xchg()
if the count has already been set to -1. For x86, the check is modified
to include all negative numbers to cover a larger case.

The following table shows the jobs per minutes (JPM) scalability data
on an 8-node 80-core Westmere box with a 3.7.10 kernel. The numactl
command is used to restrict the running of the high_systime workloads
to 1/2/4/8 nodes with hyperthreading on and off.

+-----------------+-----------+------------+----------+
|  Configuration  | Mean JPM  |  Mean JPM  | % Change |
|		  | w/o patch | with patch |	      |
+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
|		  |      User Range 1100 - 2000	      |
+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
| 8 nodes, HT on  |    36980   |   148590  | +301.8%  |
| 8 nodes, HT off |    42799   |   145011  | +238.8%  |
| 4 nodes, HT on  |    61318   |   118445  |  +51.1%  |
| 4 nodes, HT off |   158481   |   158592  |   +0.1%  |
| 2 nodes, HT on  |   180602   |   173967  |   -3.7%  |
| 2 nodes, HT off |   198409   |   198073  |   -0.2%  |
| 1 node , HT on  |   149042   |   147671  |   -0.9%  |
| 1 node , HT off |   126036   |   126533  |   +0.4%  |
+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
|		  |       User Range 200 - 1000	      |
+-----------------+-----------------------------------+
| 8 nodes, HT on  |   41525    |   122349  | +194.6%  |
| 8 nodes, HT off |   49866    |   124032  | +148.7%  |
| 4 nodes, HT on  |   66409    |   106984  |  +61.1%  |
| 4 nodes, HT off |  119880    |   130508  |   +8.9%  |
| 2 nodes, HT on  |  138003    |   133948  |   -2.9%  |
| 2 nodes, HT off |  132792    |   131997  |   -0.6%  |
| 1 node , HT on  |  116593    |   115859  |   -0.6%  |
| 1 node , HT off |  104499    |   104597  |   +0.1%  |
+-----------------+------------+-----------+----------+
At low user range 10-100, the JPM differences were within +/-1%. So
they are not that interesting.

AIM7 benchmark run has a pretty large run-to-run variance due to random
nature of the subtests executed. So a difference of less than +-5%
may not be really significant.

This patch improves high_systime workload performance at 4 nodes
and up by maintaining transaction rates without significant drop-off
at high node count.  The patch has practically no impact on 1 and 2
nodes system.

The table below shows the percentage time (as reported by perf
record -a -s -g) spent on the __mutex_lock_slowpath() function by
the high_systime workload at 1500 users for 2/4/8-node configurations
with hyperthreading off.

+---------------+-----------------+------------------+---------+
| Configuration | %Time w/o patch | %Time with patch | %Change |
+---------------+-----------------+------------------+---------+
|    8 nodes    |      65.34%     |      0.69%       |  -99%   |
|    4 nodes    |       8.70%	  |      1.02%	     |  -88%   |
|    2 nodes    |       0.41%     |      0.32%       |  -22%   |
+---------------+-----------------+------------------+---------+
It is obvious that the dramatic performance improvement at 8
nodes was due to the drastic cut in the time spent within the
__mutex_lock_slowpath() function.

The table below show the improvements in other AIM7 workloads (at 8
nodes, hyperthreading off).

+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
|   Workload   | mean % change | mean % change  | mean % change   |
|              | 10-100 users  | 200-1000 users | 1100-2000 users |
+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
| alltests     |     +0.6%     |   +104.2%      |   +185.9%       |
| five_sec     |     +1.9%     |     +0.9%      |     +0.9%       |
| fserver      |     +1.4%     |     -7.7%      |     +5.1%       |
| new_fserver  |     -0.5%     |     +3.2%      |     +3.1%       |
| shared       |    +13.1%     |   +146.1%      |   +181.5%       |
| short        |     +7.4%     |     +5.0%      |     +4.2%       |
+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@hp.com>
Reviewed-by: Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr.bueso@hp.com>
mutex: Queue mutex spinners with MCS lock to reduce cacheline contention

Date	Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:37:58 -0400

The current mutex spinning code (with MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER option turned
on) allow multiple tasks to spin on a single mutex concurrently. A
potential problem with the current approach is that when the mutex
becomes available, all the spinning tasks will try to acquire the
mutex more or less simultaneously. As a result, there will be a lot of
cacheline bouncing especially on systems with a large number of CPUs.

This patch tries to reduce this kind of contention by putting the
mutex spinners into a queue so that only the first one in the queue
will try to acquire the mutex. This will reduce contention and allow
all the tasks to move forward faster.

The queuing of mutex spinners is done using an MCS lock based
implementation which will further reduce contention on the mutex
cacheline than a similar ticket spinlock based implementation. This
patch will add a new field into the mutex data structure for holding
the MCS lock. This expands the mutex size by 8 bytes for 64-bit system
and 4 bytes for 32-bit system. This overhead will be avoid if the
MUTEX_SPIN_ON_OWNER option is turned off.

The following table shows the jobs per minute (JPM) scalability data
on an 8-node 80-core Westmere box with a 3.7.10 kernel. The numactl
command is used to restrict the running of the fserver workloads to
1/2/4/8 nodes with hyperthreading off.

+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+----------+
|  Configuration  | Mean JPM  | Mean JPM  |  Mean JPM   | % Change |
|		  | w/o patch | patch 1   | patches 1&2 |  1->1&2  |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
|		  |              User Range 1100 - 2000		   |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
| 8 nodes, HT off |  227972   |  227237   |   305043    |  +34.2%  |
| 4 nodes, HT off |  393503   |  381558   |   394650    |   +3.4%  |
| 2 nodes, HT off |  334957   |  325240   |   338853    |   +4.2%  |
| 1 node , HT off |  198141   |  197972   |   198075    |   +0.1%  |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
|		  |              User Range 200 - 1000		   |
+-----------------+------------------------------------------------+
| 8 nodes, HT off |  282325   |  312870   |   332185    |   +6.2%  |
| 4 nodes, HT off |  390698   |  378279   |   393419    |   +4.0%  |
| 2 nodes, HT off |  336986   |  326543   |   340260    |   +4.2%  |
| 1 node , HT off |  197588   |  197622   |   197582    |    0.0%  |
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-------------+----------+
At low user range 10-100, the JPM differences were within +/-1%. So
they are not that interesting.

The fserver workload uses mutex spinning extensively. With just
the mutex change in the first patch, there is no noticeable change
in performance.  Rather, there is a slight drop in performance. This
mutex spinning patch more than recovers the lost performance and show
a significant increase of +30% at high user load with the full 8 nodes.
Similar improvements were also seen in a 3.8 kernel.

The table below shows the %time spent by different kernel functions
as reported by perf when running the fserver workload at 1500 users
with all 8 nodes.

+-----------------------+-----------+---------+-------------+
|        Function       |  % time   | % time  |   % time    |
|                       | w/o patch | patch 1 | patches 1&2 |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------+-------------+
| __read_lock_failed    |  34.96%   | 34.91%  |   29.14%    |
| __write_lock_failed   |  10.14%   | 10.68%  |    7.51%    |
| mutex_spin_on_owner   |   3.62%   |  3.42%  |    2.33%    |
| mspin_lock            |    N/A    |   N/A   |    9.90%    |
| __mutex_lock_slowpath |   1.46%   |  0.81%  |    0.14%    |
| _raw_spin_lock        |   2.25%   |  2.50%  |    1.10%    |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------+-------------+
The fserver workload for an 8-node system is dominated by the
contention in the read/write lock. Mutex contention also plays a
role. With the first patch only, mutex contention is down (as shown by
the __mutex_lock_slowpath figure) which help a little bit. We saw only
a few percents improvement with that.

By applying patch 2 as well, the single mutex_spin_on_owner figure is
now split out into an additional mspin_lock figure. The time increases
from 3.42% to 11.23%. It shows a great reduction in contention among
the spinners leading to a 30% improvement. The time ratio 9.9/2.33=4.3
indicates that there are on average 4+ spinners waiting in the spin_lock
loop for each spinner in the mutex_spin_on_owner loop. Contention in
other locking functions also go down by quite a lot.

The table below shows the performance change of both patches 1 & 2 over
patch 1 alone in other AIM7 workloads (at 8 nodes, hyperthreading off).

+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
|   Workload   | mean % change | mean % change  | mean % change   |
|              | 10-100 users  | 200-1000 users | 1100-2000 users |
+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
| alltests     |      0.0%     |     -0.8%      |     +0.6%       |
| five_sec     |     -0.3%     |     +0.8%      |     +0.8%       |
| high_systime |     +0.4%     |     +2.4%      |     +2.1%       |
| new_fserver  |     +0.1%     |    +14.1%      |    +34.2%       |
| shared       |     -0.5%     |     -0.3%      |     -0.4%       |
| short        |     -1.7%     |     -9.8%      |     -8.3%       |
+--------------+---------------+----------------+-----------------+
The short workload is the only one that shows a decline in performance
probably due to the spinner locking and queuing overhead.

Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@hp.com>