PALLOC is a kernel-level memory allocator that exploits page-based virtual-to-physical memory translation to selectively allocate memory pages of each application to the desired DRAM banks. The goal of PALLOC is to control applications' memory locations in a way to minimize memory performance unpredictability in multicore systems by eliminating bank sharing among applications executing in parallel. PALLOC is a software based solution, which is fully compatible with existing COTS hardware platforms and transparent to applications (i.e., no need to modify application code.)

The source code of the Linux 3.6.0 kernel with PALLOC support can be obtained as follows.

$ git clone --depth 1 -b palloc-3.6 https://github.com/heechul/linux.git

Or you can use one of the prepared patches for different Linux kernel versions.

To build the kernel with PALLOC enabled, the following option must be enabled.

CONFIG_CGROUP_PALLOC=y

See README-map-detector.md

For cache partitioning, just use the cache set bits instead of DRAM bank bits.

1. Select physical adddress bits to be used for page coloring

   • For normal address bits (e.g., Intel Nehalem)

    # echo 0x00183000 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/palloc_mask
        --> select bit 12, 13, 19, 20. (total bins: 2^4 = 16)
   

   • For XOR mapped address bits (e.g., Intel Haswell)

    # echo 0x0001e000 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/palloc_mask
    # echo xor 13 17 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/control
    # echo xor 14 18 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/control
    # echo xor 15 19 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/control
    # echo xor 16 20 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/control
    # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/use_mc_xor
    --> select (13 XOR 17), (14 XOR 18), (15 XOR 19), and (16 XOR 20) (total bins: 2^4 = 16)
   

   • CGROUP partition setting

    # mount -t cgroup xxx /sys/fs/cgroup
    # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/part1
    # echo 0 > /sys/fs/cgroup/part1/cpuset.cpus
    # echo 0 > /sys/fs/cgroup/part1/cpuset.mems
    # echo 0-3 > /sys/fs/cgroup/part1/palloc.bins
    --> bin 0,1,2,3 are assigned to part1 CGROUP.
    # echo $$ > /sys/fs/cgroup/part1/tasks
    --> from now on, all processes invoked from the shell use pages from the bins 0,1,2,3 only.
   

   • Enable PALLOC

    # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/use_palloc
    --> enable palloc (owise the default buddy allocator will be used)
   

   • Other options

    # echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/debug_level  
    --> enable debug messsages visible through /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace. [Recommended]
    # echo 4 > /sys/kernel/debug/palloc/alloc_balance
     --> wait until at least 4 different colors are in the color cache. [Recommended]
   

2. Disable support for transparent huge pages from kernel:

    # echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled
    --> palloc doesn't work with transparent huge page. please disable this.
   

• Heechul Yun, Renato, Zheng-Pei Wu, Rodolfo Pellizzoni. "PALLOC: DRAM Bank-Aware Memory Allocator for Performance Isolation on Multicore Platforms," IEEE Intl. Conference on Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2014. (pdf, ppt)