MemoryOptimizer -- hot page accounting and migration daemon

PREREQUISITE

Hardware

• Intel Skylake/Cascade Lake processors
• NVDIMM persistent memory

Kernel

• LKML discussions:

  [RFC][PATCH v2 00/21] PMEM NUMA node and hotness accounting/migration

• git repo:

    git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wfg/linux.git
    git checkout -B ept-idle-v2-4.20 origin/ept-idle-v2-4.20
  

• kconfig:

    CONFIG_NUMA=y
    CONFIG_MEM_SOFT_DIRTY=y
    CONFIG_PROC_PAGE_MONITOR=y
    CONFIG_IDLE_PAGE_TRACKING=y
    CONFIG_KVM=m
    CONFIG_KVM_EPT_IDLE=m
  

OS packages

Debian/Ubuntu and RHEL users can run this script to install packages:

./install-deps.sh

Build

make

TOOLS

• page-refs: PFN based page table scan
• task-refs: page table scan and migration for one process/VM
• sys-refs: page table scan and migration for a set of process/VMs

sys-refs is most powerful and can run as daemon to manage hot/cold page placement on DRAM/PMEM nodes.