Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the 2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2023 |
| Pages | 897-914 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| ISBN (electronic) | 9781939133359 |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
| Event | 2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2023 - Boston, United States Duration: 10 Jul 2023 → 12 Jul 2023 |
Abstract
Within the operating-system’s memory-management subsystem, the page-frame allocator is the most fundamental component. It administers the physical-memory frames, which are required to populate the page-table tree. Although the appearance of heterogeneous, nonvolatile, and huge memories has drastically changed the memory hierarchy, we still manage our physical memory with the seminal methods from the 1960s. With this paper, we argue that it is time to revisit the design of page-frame allocators. We demonstrate that the Linux frame allocator not only scales poorly on multi-core systems, but it also comes with a high memory overhead, suffers from huge-frame fragmentation, and uses scattered data structures that hinder its usage as a persistent-memory allocator. With LLFREE, we provide a new lock- and log-free allocator design that scales well, has a small memory footprint, and is readily applicable to nonvolatile memory. LLFREE uses cache-friendly data structures and exhibits antifragmentation behavior without inducing additional performance overheads. Compared to the Linux frame allocator, LLFREE reduces the allocation time for concurrent 4 KiB allocations by up to 88 percent and for 2 MiB allocations by up to 98 percent. For memory compaction, LLFREE decreases the number of required page movements by 64 percent.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science(all)
- General Computer Science
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Proceedings of the 2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2023. 2023. p. 897-914.
Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Research › peer review
}
TY - GEN
T1 - LLFREE
T2 - 2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2023
AU - Wrenger, Lars
AU - Rommel, Florian
AU - Halbuer, Alexander
AU - Dietrich, Christian
AU - Lohmann, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information: This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein-schaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 468988364, 501887536.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Within the operating-system’s memory-management subsystem, the page-frame allocator is the most fundamental component. It administers the physical-memory frames, which are required to populate the page-table tree. Although the appearance of heterogeneous, nonvolatile, and huge memories has drastically changed the memory hierarchy, we still manage our physical memory with the seminal methods from the 1960s. With this paper, we argue that it is time to revisit the design of page-frame allocators. We demonstrate that the Linux frame allocator not only scales poorly on multi-core systems, but it also comes with a high memory overhead, suffers from huge-frame fragmentation, and uses scattered data structures that hinder its usage as a persistent-memory allocator. With LLFREE, we provide a new lock- and log-free allocator design that scales well, has a small memory footprint, and is readily applicable to nonvolatile memory. LLFREE uses cache-friendly data structures and exhibits antifragmentation behavior without inducing additional performance overheads. Compared to the Linux frame allocator, LLFREE reduces the allocation time for concurrent 4 KiB allocations by up to 88 percent and for 2 MiB allocations by up to 98 percent. For memory compaction, LLFREE decreases the number of required page movements by 64 percent.
AB - Within the operating-system’s memory-management subsystem, the page-frame allocator is the most fundamental component. It administers the physical-memory frames, which are required to populate the page-table tree. Although the appearance of heterogeneous, nonvolatile, and huge memories has drastically changed the memory hierarchy, we still manage our physical memory with the seminal methods from the 1960s. With this paper, we argue that it is time to revisit the design of page-frame allocators. We demonstrate that the Linux frame allocator not only scales poorly on multi-core systems, but it also comes with a high memory overhead, suffers from huge-frame fragmentation, and uses scattered data structures that hinder its usage as a persistent-memory allocator. With LLFREE, we provide a new lock- and log-free allocator design that scales well, has a small memory footprint, and is readily applicable to nonvolatile memory. LLFREE uses cache-friendly data structures and exhibits antifragmentation behavior without inducing additional performance overheads. Compared to the Linux frame allocator, LLFREE reduces the allocation time for concurrent 4 KiB allocations by up to 88 percent and for 2 MiB allocations by up to 98 percent. For memory compaction, LLFREE decreases the number of required page movements by 64 percent.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176927514&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85176927514
SP - 897
EP - 914
BT - Proceedings of the 2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, ATC 2023
Y2 - 10 July 2023 through 12 July 2023
ER -