mm/slab: introduce kmem_cache flag SLAB_NO_MERGE

Allow API users of kmem_cache_create to specify that they don't want
any slab merge or aliasing (with similar sized objects). Use this in
kfence_test.

The SKB (sk_buff) kmem_cache slab is critical for network performance.
Network stack uses kmem_cache_{alloc,free}_bulk APIs to gain
performance by amortising the alloc/free cost.

For the bulk API to perform efficiently the slub fragmentation need to
be low. Especially for the SLUB allocator, the efficiency of bulk free
API depend on objects belonging to the same slab (page).

When running different network performance microbenchmarks, I started
to notice that performance was reduced (slightly) when machines had
longer uptimes. I believe the cause was 'skbuff_head_cache' got
aliased/merged into the general slub for 256 bytes sized objects (with
my kernel config, without CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY).

For SKB kmem_cache network stack have reasons for not merging, but it
varies depending on kernel config (e.g. CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY).
We want to explicitly set SLAB_NO_MERGE for this kmem_cache.

Another use case for the flag has been described by David Sterba [1]:

> This can be used for more fine grained control over the caches or for
> debugging builds where separate slabs can verify that no objects leak.

> The slab_nomerge boot option is too coarse and would need to be
> enabled on all testing hosts. There are some other ways how to disable
> merging, e.g. a slab constructor but this disables poisoning besides
> that it adds additional overhead. Other flags are internal and may
> have other semantics.

> A concrete example what motivates the flag. During 'btrfs balance'
> slab top reported huge increase in caches like

>  1330095 1330095 100%    0.10K  34105       39    136420K Acpi-ParseExt
>  1734684 1734684 100%    0.14K  61953       28    247812K pid_namespace
>  8244036 6873075  83%    0.11K 229001       36    916004K khugepaged_mm_slot

> which was confusing and that it's because of slab merging was not the
> first idea.  After rebooting with slab_nomerge all the caches were
> from btrfs_ namespace as expected.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230524101748.30714-1-dsterba@suse.com/

[ vbabka@suse.cz: rename to SLAB_NO_MERGE, change the flag value to the
  one proposed by David so it does not collide with internal SLAB/SLUB
  flags, write a comment for the flag, expand changelog, drop the skbuff
  part to be handled spearately ]

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/167396280045.539803.7540459812377220500.stgit@firesoul/
Reported-by: David Sterba <dsterba@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/slab.h b/include/linux/slab.h
index 6b3e155b70bf..72bc906d8bc7 100644
--- a/include/linux/slab.h
+++ b/include/linux/slab.h
@@ -106,6 +106,18 @@
 /* Avoid kmemleak tracing */
 #define SLAB_NOLEAKTRACE	((slab_flags_t __force)0x00800000U)
 
+/*
+ * Prevent merging with compatible kmem caches. This flag should be used
+ * cautiously. Valid use cases:
+ *
+ * - caches created for self-tests (e.g. kunit)
+ * - general caches created and used by a subsystem, only when a
+ *   (subsystem-specific) debug option is enabled
+ * - performance critical caches, should be very rare and consulted with slab
+ *   maintainers, and not used together with CONFIG_SLUB_TINY
+ */
+#define SLAB_NO_MERGE		((slab_flags_t __force)0x01000000U)
+
 /* Fault injection mark */
 #ifdef CONFIG_FAILSLAB
 # define SLAB_FAILSLAB		((slab_flags_t __force)0x02000000U)