cgroup memory controller: document huge memory/cache overhead in Kconfig
Document huge memory/cache overhead of memory controller in Kconfig
I was a little surprised that 2.6.25-rc* increased struct page for the
memory controller. At least on many x86-64 machines it will not fit into a
single cache line now anymore and also costs considerable amounts of RAM.
At earlier review I remembered asking for a external data structure for
this.
It's also quite unobvious that a innocent looking Kconfig option with a
single line Kconfig description has such a negative effect.
This patch attempts to document these disadvantages at least so that users
configuring their kernel can make a informed decision.
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com>
Acked-by: Paul Menage <menage@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
diff --git a/init/Kconfig b/init/Kconfig
index dcef8b5..f698a5a 100644
--- a/init/Kconfig
+++ b/init/Kconfig
@@ -394,6 +394,14 @@
Provides a memory controller that manages both page cache and
RSS memory.
+ Note that setting this option increases fixed memory overhead
+ associated with each page of memory in the system by 4/8 bytes
+ and also increases cache misses because struct page on many 64bit
+ systems will not fit into a single cache line anymore.
+
+ Only enable when you're ok with these trade offs and really
+ sure you need the memory controller.
+
config PROC_PID_CPUSET
bool "Include legacy /proc/<pid>/cpuset file"
depends on CPUSETS