mm: avoid repeated anon_vma lock/unlock sequences in anon_vma_clone()

In anon_vma_clone() we traverse the vma->anon_vma_chain of the source
vma, locking the anon_vma for each entry.

But they are all going to have the same root entry, which means that
we're locking and unlocking the same lock over and over again.  Which is
expensive in locked operations, but can get _really_ expensive when that
root entry sees any kind of lock contention.

In fact, Tim Chen reports a big performance regression due to this: when
we switched to use a mutex instead of a spinlock, the contention case
gets much worse.

So to alleviate this all, this commit creates a small helper function
(lock_anon_vma_root()) that can be used to take the lock just once
rather than taking and releasing it over and over again.

We still have the same "take the lock and release" it behavior in the
exit path (in unlink_anon_vmas()), but that one is a bit harder to fix
since we're actually freeing the anon_vma entries as we go, and that
will touch the lock too.

Reported-and-tested-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com>
Tested-by: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 36 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c
index 0eb463ea88dd..f286697c61dc 100644
--- a/mm/rmap.c
+++ b/mm/rmap.c
@@ -200,6 +200,32 @@ int anon_vma_prepare(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
 	return -ENOMEM;
 }
 
+/*
+ * This is a useful helper function for locking the anon_vma root as
+ * we traverse the vma->anon_vma_chain, looping over anon_vma's that
+ * have the same vma.
+ *
+ * Such anon_vma's should have the same root, so you'd expect to see
+ * just a single mutex_lock for the whole traversal.
+ */
+static inline struct anon_vma *lock_anon_vma_root(struct anon_vma *root, struct anon_vma *anon_vma)
+{
+	struct anon_vma *new_root = anon_vma->root;
+	if (new_root != root) {
+		if (WARN_ON_ONCE(root))
+			mutex_unlock(&root->mutex);
+		root = new_root;
+		mutex_lock(&root->mutex);
+	}
+	return root;
+}
+
+static inline void unlock_anon_vma_root(struct anon_vma *root)
+{
+	if (root)
+		mutex_unlock(&root->mutex);
+}
+
 static void anon_vma_chain_link(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 				struct anon_vma_chain *avc,
 				struct anon_vma *anon_vma)
@@ -208,13 +234,11 @@ static void anon_vma_chain_link(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 	avc->anon_vma = anon_vma;
 	list_add(&avc->same_vma, &vma->anon_vma_chain);
 
-	anon_vma_lock(anon_vma);
 	/*
 	 * It's critical to add new vmas to the tail of the anon_vma,
 	 * see comment in huge_memory.c:__split_huge_page().
 	 */
 	list_add_tail(&avc->same_anon_vma, &anon_vma->head);
-	anon_vma_unlock(anon_vma);
 }
 
 /*
@@ -224,16 +248,23 @@ static void anon_vma_chain_link(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 int anon_vma_clone(struct vm_area_struct *dst, struct vm_area_struct *src)
 {
 	struct anon_vma_chain *avc, *pavc;
+	struct anon_vma *root = NULL;
 
 	list_for_each_entry_reverse(pavc, &src->anon_vma_chain, same_vma) {
+		struct anon_vma *anon_vma;
+
 		avc = anon_vma_chain_alloc();
 		if (!avc)
 			goto enomem_failure;
-		anon_vma_chain_link(dst, avc, pavc->anon_vma);
+		anon_vma = pavc->anon_vma;
+		root = lock_anon_vma_root(root, anon_vma);
+		anon_vma_chain_link(dst, avc, anon_vma);
 	}
+	unlock_anon_vma_root(root);
 	return 0;
 
  enomem_failure:
+	unlock_anon_vma_root(root);
 	unlink_anon_vmas(dst);
 	return -ENOMEM;
 }
@@ -280,7 +311,9 @@ int anon_vma_fork(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct vm_area_struct *pvma)
 	get_anon_vma(anon_vma->root);
 	/* Mark this anon_vma as the one where our new (COWed) pages go. */
 	vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
+	anon_vma_lock(anon_vma);
 	anon_vma_chain_link(vma, avc, anon_vma);
+	anon_vma_unlock(anon_vma);
 
 	return 0;