Add soft limits to the memory controller v2 [LWN.net]

From:		Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:		linux-mm@kvack.org
Subject:		[mm][PATCH 0/4] Add soft limits to the memory controller v2
Date:		Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:32:32 +0530
Message-ID:		<20080219070232.25349.21196.sendpatchset@localhost.localdomain>
Cc:		Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au>, Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>, Sudhir Kumar <skumar@linux.vnet.ibm.com>, Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>, YAMAMOTO Takashi <yamamoto@valinux.co.jp>, Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at>, Paul Menage <menage@google.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Lee Schermerhorn <Lee.Schermerhorn@hp.com>, "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>, David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>, Pavel Emelianov <xemul@openvz.org>, Dhaval Giani <dhaval@linux.vnet.ibm.com>, Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com>, Rik Van Riel <riel@redhat.com>, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Archive-link:		Article, Thread

This patchset implements the basic changes required to implement soft limits
in the memory controller. A soft limit is a variation of the currently
supported hard limit feature. A memory cgroup can exceed it's soft limit
provided there is no contention for memory.

These patches were tested on a PowerPC box, by running a programs in parallel,
and checking their behaviour for various soft limit values.

These patches were developed on top of 2.6.25-rc2-mm1. Comments, suggestions,
criticism are all welcome!

TODOs:

1. Currently there is no ordering of memory cgroups over their limit.
   We use a simple linked list to maintain a list of groups over their
   limit. In the future, we might want to create a heap of objects ordered
   by the amount by which they exceed soft limit.
2. Distribute the excessive (non-contended) resources between groups
   in the ratio of their soft limits
3. Merge with KAMEZAWA's and YAMAMOTO's water mark and background reclaim
   patches in the long-term


series
------
memory-controller-res_counters-soft-limit-setup.patch
memory-controller-add-soft-limit-interface.patch
memory-controller-reclaim-on-contention.patch
memory-controller-add-soft-limit-documentation.patch

-- 
	Warm Regards,
	Balbir Singh
	Linux Technology Center
	IBM, ISTL