On 31/07/2026 08:07, Arunpravin Paneer Selvam wrote:
The current buddy allocator maintains separate clear_tree[] and
dirty_tree[] rbtrees per order, preventing coalescing between cleared
and dirty buddies. Under mixed workloads, this creates a merge barrier:
adjacent buddies frequently end up split across trees, forcing reliance
on __force_merge() during allocation.
__force_merge() performs an O(N x max_order) scan under the VRAM manager
lock, leading to allocation stalls and failures for large contiguous
requests even when sufficient total free memory is available.
Solution
Replace the dual-tree design with:
- A single free_tree[order] rbtree for dirty and mixed free blocks
(fully cleared free blocks float outside this tree)
- A lightweight out-of-band dirty tracker (gpu_dirty_tracker)
Fully cleared free blocks are tracked outside the buddy trees using an
augmented interval rbtree, enabling O(log E) lookup of the largest
cleared extents.
Buddy coalescing is now unconditional in __gpu_buddy_free(), regardless
of clear/dirty state. This removes the merge barrier and eliminates the
need for __force_merge().
Benefits
- Correct high-order allocations after mixed clear/dirty workloads
- Elimination of O(N x max_order) merge cost from the allocation path
- O(log E) cleared-extent lookup replacing O(N) scans
- Predictable allocation latency under fragmentation
- Reduced complexity with a single tree per order
Test:
dEQP-VK.memory.allocation.basic.size_8KiB.reverse.count_4000
Below data is from /sys/kernel/debug/dri/1/amdgpu_vram_mm:
Base (dual-tree), before VKCTS test:
order- 6 free: 6 MiB, blocks: 26
order- 5 free: 1 MiB, blocks: 15
order- 4 free: 960 KiB, blocks: 15
order- 3 free: 5 MiB, blocks: 171
order- 2 free: 2 MiB, blocks: 176
order- 1 free: 1 MiB, blocks: 165
order- 0 free: 16 KiB, blocks: 4
Base (dual-tree), after VKCTS test:
order- 6 free: 768 KiB, blocks: 3
order- 5 free: 499 MiB, blocks: 3999
order- 4 free: 250 MiB, blocks: 4001
order- 3 free: 129 MiB, blocks: 4157
order- 2 free: 65 MiB, blocks: 4161
order- 1 free: 63 MiB, blocks: 8138
order- 0 free: 20 KiB, blocks: 5
Dirty tracker, before VKCTS test:
order- 6 free: 4 MiB, blocks: 19
order- 5 free: 2 MiB, blocks: 18
order- 4 free: 704 KiB, blocks: 11
order- 3 free: 5 MiB, blocks: 168
order- 2 free: 2 MiB, blocks: 174
order- 1 free: 1 MiB, blocks: 167
order- 0 free: 32 KiB, blocks: 8
Dirty tracker, after VKCTS test:
order- 6 free: 4 MiB, blocks: 19
order- 5 free: 2 MiB, blocks: 18
order- 4 free: 704 KiB, blocks: 11
order- 3 free: 5 MiB, blocks: 168
order- 2 free: 2 MiB, blocks: 174
order- 1 free: 1 MiB, blocks: 167
order- 0 free: 28 KiB, blocks: 7
v2:
- Code-style cleanup and minor refactoring
- Renamed locals for clarity
v3:
- Keep cleared blocks inside free_tree[] instead of floating them.
- Add subtree_has_dirty rbtree augment for O(log N) dirty-first walk.
v4:
- Fixed checkpatch warnings.
- Optimized gpu_buddy_reset_clear() to a single post-order walk that
flips block headers and recomputes the rbtree augment in one pass.
- Propagate subtree_max_size top-down in insert_extent() so ancestors
are not left with stale values on no-rotation inserts. (sashiko)
- Drop the whole extent in gpu_dirty_tracker_mark_dirty() when the
inside-split allocation fails, avoiding a stale clear claim. (sashiko)
- Make gpu_dirty_tracker_find() alignment-aware and fall back to the
dirty tree on steered failure to avoid spurious -ENOSPC. (sashiko)
v5:
- Track dirty extents instead of cleared ones: steer dirty allocs onto
tracked dirty windows and pick clear allocs via a free-tree augment,
avoiding clear-memory wastage by keeping cleared free blocks untouched
during dirty allocation.
v6:
- Make __alloc_range_bias() return the highest/right-most address by
default, establishing top-down as the intended placement for
range-biased allocations.
- Honour GPU_BUDDY_CLEAR_ALLOCATION in __alloc_range_bias() by steering
the descent towards clear subtrees for non-top-down clear
requests. (sashiko)
- Skip dirty-tracker steering for offset-aligned requests so they keep
their min_block_size alignment. (sashiko)
- sashiko reported that the __GFP_NOFAIL dirty-extent allocations on
the free path could deadlock during memory reclaim, since that is a
GFP_KERNEL allocation on the free path; move to a per-tracker
mempool so extent nodes are guaranteed without __GFP_NOFAIL.
(sashiko)
- Derive each free block's clear/dirty class from the blocks already
in hand on split, free, alloc, trim and init instead of querying the
dirty tracker, removing the tracker lookups from the hot paths.
v7:
- Preserve mixed-block clear state in __gpu_buddy_free() when a mixed
split child is re-merged after an undone split. (sashiko)
- Prefer a fully-clear block over a mixed one of the same order via a
single ordered clear-state max augment on free_tree[].
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8
Cc: Matthew Auld <[email protected]>
Cc: Christian König <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Arunpravin Paneer Selvam <[email protected]>
<snip>
@@ -620,13 +1100,18 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(gpu_buddy_reset_clear);
void gpu_buddy_free_block(struct gpu_buddy *mm,
struct gpu_buddy_block *block)
{
+ u64 size = gpu_buddy_block_size(mm, block);
+ u64 offset = gpu_buddy_block_offset(block);
+
gpu_buddy_driver_lock_held(mm);
BUG_ON(!gpu_buddy_block_is_allocated(block));
- mm->avail += gpu_buddy_block_size(mm, block);
- if (gpu_buddy_block_is_clear(block))
- mm->clear_avail += gpu_buddy_block_size(mm, block);
- __gpu_buddy_free(mm, block, false);
+ mm->avail += size;
+ if (!gpu_buddy_block_is_clear(block))
+ gpu_dirty_tracker_mark_dirty(&mm->dirty, offset, size);
+
+ gpu_buddy_sync_clear_avail(mm);
+ __gpu_buddy_free(mm, block);
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL(gpu_buddy_free_block);
@@ -641,9 +1126,9 @@ static void __gpu_buddy_free_list(struct gpu_buddy *mm,
list_for_each_entry_safe(block, on, objects, link) {
if (mark_clear)
- mark_cleared(block);
+ block->header |= GPU_BUDDY_HEADER_CLEAR;
else if (mark_dirty)
- clear_reset(block);
+ block->header &= ~GPU_BUDDY_HEADER_CLEAR;
gpu_buddy_free_block(mm, block);
Just a thought, not a blocker or anything. It looks possible that as you
loop through the blocks here you could easily extend the extent range if
you keep finding something contig to the current extent, and then turn
that into fewer mark_dirty() calls. If you ever encounter something
non-contig you call mark_dirty() with whatever extent range you have
now, and then start again. Obvious case is if you had a contig
allocation which is more than one block, which could be turned into one
mark_dirty().
