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]>
@@ -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);
