numa — overview of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) refers to multiprocessor systems whose memory is divided into multiple memory nodes. The access time of a memory node depends on the relative locations of the accessing CPU and the accessed node. (This contrasts with a symmetric multiprocessor system, where the access time for all of the memory is the same for all CPUs.) Normally, each CPU on a NUMA system has a local memory node whose contents can be accessed faster than the memory in the node local to another CPU or the memory on a bus shared by all CPUs.
The Linux kernel implements the following NUMA-related
system calls: get_mempolicy(2),
mbind(2), migrate_pages(2),
move_pages(2), and
set_mempolicy(2).
However, applications should normally use the interface
provided by libnuma; see "Library
Support" below.
This file displays information about a process's NUMA memory policy and allocation.
Each line contains information about a memory range used by the process, displaying—among other information—the effective memory policy for that memory range and on which nodes the pages have been allocated.
numa_maps is a
read-only file. When /proc/<pid>/numa_maps is read, the
kernel will scan the virtual address space of the process
and report how memory is used. One line is displayed for
each unique memory range of the process.
The first field of each line shows the starting address
of the memory range. This field allows a correlation with
the contents of the /proc/<pid>/maps file, which
contains the end address of the range and other
information, such as the access permissions and
sharing.
The second field shows the memory policy currently in effect for the memory range. Note that the effective policy is not necessarily the policy installed by the process for that memory range. Specifically, if the process installed a "default" policy for that range, the effective policy for that range will be the process policy, which may or may not be "default".
The rest of the line contains information about the pages allocated in the memory range, as follows:
N<node>=<nr_pages>The number of pages allocated on <node>.
<nr_pages>
includes only pages currently mapped by the process.
Page migration and memory reclaim may have
temporarily unmapped pages associated with this
memory range. These pages may only show up again
after the process has attempted to reference them. If
the memory range represents a shared memory area or
file mapping, other processes may currently have
additional pages mapped in a corresponding memory
range.
file=<filename>The file backing the memory range. If the file is mapped as private, write accesses may have generated COW (Copy-On-Write) pages in this memory range. These pages are displayed as anonymous pages.
heapMemory range is used for the heap.
stackMemory range is used for the stack.
hugeHuge memory range. The page counts shown are huge pages and not regular sized pages.
anon=<pages>The number of anonymous page in the range.
dirty=<pages>Number of dirty pages.
mapped=<pages>Total number of mapped pages, if different from
dirty and
anon
pages.
mapmax=<count>Maximum mapcount (number of processes mapping a single page) encountered during the scan. This may be used as an indicator of the degree of sharing occurring in a given memory range.
swapcache=<count>Number of pages that have an associated entry on a swap device.
active=<pages>The number of pages on the active list. This field is only shown if different from the number of pages in this range. This means that some inactive pages exist in the memory range that may be removed from memory by the swapper soon.
writeback=<pages>Number of pages that are currently being written out to disk.
The Linux NUMA system calls and /proc interface are only available if the
kernel was configured and built with the CONFIG_NUMA option.
Link with −lnuma to
get the system call definitions. libnuma and the required
<numaif.h>
header are available in the numactl package.
However, applications should not use these system calls
directly. Instead, the higher level interface provided by
the numa(3) functions in the
numactl package
is recommended. The numactl package is
available at ftp://oss.sgi.com/www/projects/libnuma/download/.
The package is also included in some Linux distributions.
Some distributions include the development library and
header in the separate numactl-devel package.
get_mempolicy(2), mbind(2), move_pages(2), set_mempolicy(2), numa(3), cpuset(7), numactl(8)
This page is part of release 3.24 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting
bugs, can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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Copyright (c) 2008, Linux Foundation, written by Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpagesgmail.com> and Copyright 2003,2004 Andi Kleen, SuSE Labs. numa_maps material Copyright (c) 2005 Silicon Graphics Incorporated. Christoph Lameter, <cllinux-foundation.org>. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working professionally. Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. |