| Heterogeneous Memory Management (HMM) |
| |
| Transparently allow any component of a program to use any memory region of said |
| program with a device without using device specific memory allocator. This is |
| becoming a requirement to simplify the use of advance heterogeneous computing |
| where GPU, DSP or FPGA are use to perform various computations. |
| |
| This document is divided as follow, in the first section i expose the problems |
| related to the use of a device specific allocator. The second section i expose |
| the hardware limitations that are inherent to many platforms. The third section |
| gives an overview of HMM designs. The fourth section explains how CPU page- |
| table mirroring works and what is HMM purpose in this context. Fifth section |
| deals with how device memory is represented inside the kernel. Finaly the last |
| section present the new migration helper that allow to leverage the device DMA |
| engine. |
| |
| |
| 1) Problems of using device specific memory allocator: |
| 2) System bus, device memory characteristics |
| 3) Share address space and migration |
| 4) Address space mirroring implementation and API |
| 5) Represent and manage device memory from core kernel point of view |
| 6) Migrate to and from device memory |
| 7) Memory cgroup (memcg) and rss accounting |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 1) Problems of using device specific memory allocator: |
| |
| Device with large amount of on board memory (several giga bytes) like GPU have |
| historically manage their memory through dedicated driver specific API. This |
| creates a disconnect between memory allocated and managed by device driver and |
| regular application memory (private anonymous, share memory or regular file |
| back memory). From here on i will refer to this aspect as split address space. |
| I use share address space to refer to the opposite situation ie one in which |
| any memory region can be use by device transparently. |
| |
| Split address space because device can only access memory allocated through the |
| device specific API. This imply that all memory object in a program are not |
| equal from device point of view which complicate large program that rely on a |
| wide set of libraries. |
| |
| Concretly this means that code that wants to leverage device like GPU need to |
| copy object between genericly allocated memory (malloc, mmap private/share/) |
| and memory allocated through the device driver API (this still end up with an |
| mmap but of the device file). |
| |
| For flat dataset (array, grid, image, ...) this isn't too hard to achieve but |
| complex data-set (list, tree, ...) are hard to get right. Duplicating a complex |
| data-set need to re-map all the pointer relations between each of its elements. |
| This is error prone and program gets harder to debug because of the duplicate |
| data-set. |
| |
| Split address space also means that library can not transparently use data they |
| are getting from core program or other library and thus each library might have |
| to duplicate its input data-set using specific memory allocator. Large project |
| suffer from this and waste resources because of the various memory copy. |
| |
| Duplicating each library API to accept as input or output memory allocted by |
| each device specific allocator is not a viable option. It would lead to a |
| combinatorial explosions in the library entry points. |
| |
| Finaly with the advance of high level language constructs (in C++ but in other |
| language too) it is now possible for compiler to leverage GPU or other devices |
| without even the programmer knowledge. Some of compiler identified patterns are |
| only do-able with a share address. It is as well more reasonable to use a share |
| address space for all the other patterns. |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 2) System bus, device memory characteristics |
| |
| System bus cripple share address due to few limitations. Most system bus only |
| allow basic memory access from device to main memory, even cache coherency is |
| often optional. Access to device memory from CPU is even more limited, most |
| often than not it is not cache coherent. |
| |
| If we only consider the PCIE bus than device can access main memory (often |
| through an IOMMU) and be cache coherent with the CPUs. However it only allows |
| a limited set of atomic operation from device on main memory. This is worse |
| in the other direction the CPUs can only access a limited range of the device |
| memory and can not perform atomic operations on it. Thus device memory can not |
| be consider like regular memory from kernel point of view. |
| |
| Another crippling factor is the limited bandwidth (~32GBytes/s with PCIE 4.0 |
| and 16 lanes). This is 33 times less that fastest GPU memory (1 TBytes/s). |
| The final limitation is latency, access to main memory from the device has an |
| order of magnitude higher latency than when the device access its own memory. |
| |
| Some platform are developing new system bus or additions/modifications to PCIE |
| to address some of those limitations (OpenCAPI, CCIX). They mainly allow two |
| way cache coherency between CPU and device and allow all atomic operations the |
| architecture supports. Saddly not all platform are following this trends and |
| some major architecture are left without hardware solutions to those problems. |
| |
| So for share address space to make sense not only we must allow device to |
| access any memory memory but we must also permit any memory to be migrated to |
| device memory while device is using it (blocking CPU access while it happens). |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 3) Share address space and migration |
| |
| HMM intends to provide two main features. First one is to share the address |
| space by duplication the CPU page table into the device page table so same |
| address point to same memory and this for any valid main memory address in |
| the process address space. |
| |
| To achieve this, HMM offer a set of helpers to populate the device page table |
| while keeping track of CPU page table updates. Device page table updates are |
| not as easy as CPU page table updates. To update the device page table you must |
| allow a buffer (or use a pool of pre-allocated buffer) and write GPU specifics |
| commands in it to perform the update (unmap, cache invalidations and flush, |
| ...). This can not be done through common code for all device. Hence why HMM |
| provides helpers to factor out everything that can be while leaving the gory |
| details to the device driver. |
| |
| The second mechanism HMM provide is a new kind of ZONE_DEVICE memory that does |
| allow to allocate a struct page for each page of the device memory. Those page |
| are special because the CPU can not map them. They however allow to migrate |
| main memory to device memory using exhisting migration mechanism and everything |
| looks like if page was swap out to disk from CPU point of view. Using a struct |
| page gives the easiest and cleanest integration with existing mm mechanisms. |
| Again here HMM only provide helpers, first to hotplug new ZONE_DEVICE memory |
| for the device memory and second to perform migration. Policy decision of what |
| and when to migrate things is left to the device driver. |
| |
| Note that any CPU access to a device page trigger a page fault and a migration |
| back to main memory ie when a page backing an given address A is migrated from |
| a main memory page to a device page then any CPU access to address A trigger a |
| page fault and initiate a migration back to main memory. |
| |
| |
| With this two features, HMM not only allow a device to mirror a process address |
| space and keeps both CPU and device page table synchronize, but also allow to |
| leverage device memory by migrating part of data-set that is actively use by a |
| device. |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 4) Address space mirroring implementation and API |
| |
| Address space mirroring main objective is to allow to duplicate range of CPU |
| page table into a device page table and HMM helps keeping both synchronize. A |
| device driver that want to mirror a process address space must start with the |
| registration of an hmm_mirror struct: |
| |
| int hmm_mirror_register(struct hmm_mirror *mirror, |
| struct mm_struct *mm); |
| int hmm_mirror_register_locked(struct hmm_mirror *mirror, |
| struct mm_struct *mm); |
| |
| The locked variant is to be use when the driver is already holding the mmap_sem |
| of the mm in write mode. The mirror struct has a set of callback that are use |
| to propagate CPU page table: |
| |
| struct hmm_mirror_ops { |
| /* sync_cpu_device_pagetables() - synchronize page tables |
| * |
| * @mirror: pointer to struct hmm_mirror |
| * @update_type: type of update that occurred to the CPU page table |
| * @start: virtual start address of the range to update |
| * @end: virtual end address of the range to update |
| * |
| * This callback ultimately originates from mmu_notifiers when the CPU |
| * page table is updated. The device driver must update its page table |
| * in response to this callback. The update argument tells what action |
| * to perform. |
| * |
| * The device driver must not return from this callback until the device |
| * page tables are completely updated (TLBs flushed, etc); this is a |
| * synchronous call. |
| */ |
| void (*update)(struct hmm_mirror *mirror, |
| enum hmm_update action, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end); |
| }; |
| |
| Device driver must perform update to the range following action (turn range |
| read only, or fully unmap, ...). Once driver callback returns the device must |
| be done with the update. |
| |
| |
| When device driver wants to populate a range of virtual address it can use |
| either: |
| int hmm_vma_get_pfns(struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| struct hmm_range *range, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end, |
| hmm_pfn_t *pfns); |
| int hmm_vma_fault(struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| struct hmm_range *range, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end, |
| hmm_pfn_t *pfns, |
| bool write, |
| bool block); |
| |
| First one (hmm_vma_get_pfns()) will only fetch present CPU page table entry and |
| will not trigger a page fault on missing or non present entry. The second one |
| do trigger page fault on missing or read only entry if write parameter is true. |
| Page fault use the generic mm page fault code path just like a CPU page fault. |
| |
| Both function copy CPU page table into their pfns array argument. Each entry in |
| that array correspond to an address in the virtual range. HMM provide a set of |
| flags to help driver identify special CPU page table entries. |
| |
| Locking with the update() callback is the most important aspect the driver must |
| respect in order to keep things properly synchronize. The usage pattern is : |
| |
| int driver_populate_range(...) |
| { |
| struct hmm_range range; |
| ... |
| again: |
| ret = hmm_vma_get_pfns(vma, &range, start, end, pfns); |
| if (ret) |
| return ret; |
| take_lock(driver->update); |
| if (!hmm_vma_range_done(vma, &range)) { |
| release_lock(driver->update); |
| goto again; |
| } |
| |
| // Use pfns array content to update device page table |
| |
| release_lock(driver->update); |
| return 0; |
| } |
| |
| The driver->update lock is the same lock that driver takes inside its update() |
| callback. That lock must be call before hmm_vma_range_done() to avoid any race |
| with a concurrent CPU page table update. |
| |
| HMM implements all this on top of the mmu_notifier API because we wanted to a |
| simpler API and also to be able to perform optimization latter own like doing |
| concurrent device update in multi-devices scenario. |
| |
| HMM also serve as an impedence missmatch between how CPU page table update are |
| done (by CPU write to the page table and TLB flushes) from how device update |
| their own page table. Device update is a multi-step process, first appropriate |
| commands are write to a buffer, then this buffer is schedule for execution on |
| the device. It is only once the device has executed commands in the buffer that |
| the update is done. Creating and scheduling update command buffer can happen |
| concurrently for multiple devices. Waiting for each device to report commands |
| as executed is serialize (there is no point in doing this concurrently). |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 5) Represent and manage device memory from core kernel point of view |
| |
| Several differents design were try to support device memory. First one use |
| device specific data structure to keep information about migrated memory and |
| HMM hooked itself in various place of mm code to handle any access to address |
| that were back by device memory. It turns out that this ended up replicating |
| most of the fields of struct page and also needed many kernel code path to be |
| updated to understand this new kind of memory. |
| |
| Thing is most kernel code path never try to access the memory behind a page |
| but only care about struct page contents. Because of this HMM switchted to |
| directly using struct page for device memory which left most kernel code path |
| un-aware of the difference. We only need to make sure that no one ever try to |
| map those page from the CPU side. |
| |
| HMM provide a set of helpers to register and hotplug device memory as a new |
| region needing struct page. This is offer through a very simple API: |
| |
| struct hmm_devmem *hmm_devmem_add(const struct hmm_devmem_ops *ops, |
| struct device *device, |
| unsigned long size); |
| void hmm_devmem_remove(struct hmm_devmem *devmem); |
| |
| The hmm_devmem_ops is where most of the important things are: |
| |
| struct hmm_devmem_ops { |
| void (*free)(struct hmm_devmem *devmem, struct page *page); |
| int (*fault)(struct hmm_devmem *devmem, |
| struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| unsigned long addr, |
| struct page *page, |
| unsigned flags, |
| pmd_t *pmdp); |
| }; |
| |
| The first callback (free()) happens when the last reference on a device page is |
| drop. This means the device page is now free and no longer use by anyone. The |
| second callback happens whenever CPU try to access a device page which it can |
| not do. This second callback must trigger a migration back to system memory. |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 6) Migrate to and from device memory |
| |
| Because CPU can not access device memory, migration must use device DMA engine |
| to perform copy from and to device memory. For this we need a new migration |
| helper: |
| |
| int migrate_vma(const struct migrate_vma_ops *ops, |
| struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| unsigned long mentries, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end, |
| unsigned long *src, |
| unsigned long *dst, |
| void *private); |
| |
| Unlike other migration function it works on a range of virtual address, there |
| is two reasons for that. First device DMA copy has a high setup overhead cost |
| and thus batching multiple pages is needed as otherwise the migration overhead |
| make the whole excersie pointless. The second reason is because driver trigger |
| such migration base on range of address the device is actively accessing. |
| |
| The migrate_vma_ops struct define two callbacks. First one (alloc_and_copy()) |
| control destination memory allocation and copy operation. Second one is there |
| to allow device driver to perform cleanup operation after migration. |
| |
| struct migrate_vma_ops { |
| void (*alloc_and_copy)(struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| const unsigned long *src, |
| unsigned long *dst, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end, |
| void *private); |
| void (*finalize_and_map)(struct vm_area_struct *vma, |
| const unsigned long *src, |
| const unsigned long *dst, |
| unsigned long start, |
| unsigned long end, |
| void *private); |
| }; |
| |
| It is important to stress that this migration helpers allow for hole in the |
| virtual address range. Some pages in the range might not be migrated for all |
| the usual reasons (page is pin, page is lock, ...). This helper does not fail |
| but just skip over those pages. |
| |
| The alloc_and_copy() might as well decide to not migrate all pages in the |
| range (for reasons under the callback control). For those the callback just |
| have to leave the corresponding dst entry empty. |
| |
| Finaly the migration of the struct page might fails (for file back page) for |
| various reasons (failure to freeze reference, or update page cache, ...). If |
| that happens then the finalize_and_map() can catch any pages that was not |
| migrated. Note those page were still copied to new page and thus we wasted |
| bandwidth but this is considered as a rare event and a price that we are |
| willing to pay to keep all the code simpler. |
| |
| |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| 7) Memory cgroup (memcg) and rss accounting |
| |
| For now device memory is accounted as any regular page in rss counters (either |
| anonymous if device page is use for anonymous, file if device page is use for |
| file back page or shmem if device page is use for share memory). This is a |
| deliberate choice to keep existing application that might start using device |
| memory without knowing about it to keep runing unimpacted. |
| |
| Drawbacks is that OOM killer might kill an application using a lot of device |
| memory and not a lot of regular system memory and thus not freeing much system |
| memory. We want to gather more real world experience on how application and |
| system react under memory pressure in the presence of device memory before |
| deciding to account device memory differently. |
| |
| |
| Same decision was made for memory cgroup. Device memory page are accounted |
| against same memory cgroup a regular page would be accounted to. This does |
| simplify migration to and from device memory. This also means that migration |
| back from device memory to regular memory can not fail because it would |
| go above memory cgroup limit. We might revisit this choice latter on once we |
| get more experience in how device memory is use and its impact on memory |
| resource control. |
| |
| |
| Note that device memory can never be pin nor by device driver nor through GUP |
| and thus such memory is always free upon process exit. Or when last reference |
| is drop in case of share memory or file back memory. |