Re: [PATCH 5/6] sched/numa: do not feed tiering promotions into task placement stats

[Gregory Price]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2026 at 05:43:46PM +0800, Li Zhe wrote:
> NUMA balancing has separate mode bits for normal task placement and
> memory tiering. In memory-tiering-only mode, NUMA hinting faults on
> slow-tier pages are used to detect hot pages and promote them to a top
> tier. They are not normal task-placement faults.
> 
> task_numa_fault() already avoids normal placement accounting for slow-tier
> faults while memory tiering is enabled. However, a successful slow-to-fast
> promotion can bypass that check. do_numa_page() reports the destination
> node to task_numa_fault() after migration, so the fault is seen as a
> top-tier fault and can update p->numa_faults, task placement state and
> the preferred NUMA node.
> 
> Slow-tier PTEs store access-time metadata in the folio last-cpupid field.
> Before this change, numa_migrate_check() returned the same all-ones
> last_cpupid value for those faults that normal AutoNUMA uses for a first
> or unknown access. Those cases are different: the ordinary unset value
> means there is no previous CPU/PID sample, while a slow-tier access-time
> value means the field does not contain a cpupid at all.
> 
> Name the ordinary all-ones sentinel LAST_CPUPID_UNSET and use it for the
> normal first/unknown cpupid state. Return a distinct
> LAST_CPUPID_ACCESS_TIME value while the folio still carries access-time
> metadata. If normal NUMA balancing is disabled, keep the migrated-page
> accounting but skip normal task-placement accounting for those faults.
> 
> When normal NUMA balancing and memory tiering are both enabled, promoted
> pages can still feed task placement. In that mode, the user has enabled
> both CPU placement feedback and tiering promotion, so a promoted top-tier
> fault is treated as an ordinary unset-cpupid AutoNUMA fault.
> 
> A stale access-time value can also survive after memory tiering is
> disabled and later reach task_numa_fault() from a top-tier page, where
> the slow-tier validation no longer applies. Treat any remaining invalid
> last_cpupid as LAST_CPUPID_UNSET before task_numa_group() can decode a
> CPU from it.
> 
> This does not change whether a page is promoted. It only prevents
> memory-tiering-only promotion faults from being consumed by the normal
> AutoNUMA placement heuristic.
>

Similarly with prior patches - this is a pretty major change. Although I
agree with the premise, do you have any performance numbers that show
this change is beneficial?

It's quite difficult to determine what the user-face effects of this
change would be other than expecting some kind of performance benefit.

~Gregory