numa(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual numa(7)
NAME
numa - overview of Non-Uniform Memory Architecture
DESCRIPTION
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) refers to multiprocessor systems whose
memory is divided into multiple memory nodes. The access time of a mem-
ory 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 con-
tents can be accessed faster than the memory in the node local to an-
other CPU or the memory on a bus shared by all CPUs.
NUMA system calls
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 inter-
face provided by libnuma; see "Library Support" below.
/proc/pid/numa_maps (since Linux 2.6.14)
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 show up again only 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 pri-
vate, write accesses may have generated COW (Copy-On-Write) pages
in this memory range. These pages are displayed as anonymous
pages.
heap Memory range is used for the heap.
stack Memory range is used for the stack.
huge Huge 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) en-
countered 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 shown only
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.
STANDARDS
None.
NOTES
The Linux NUMA system calls and /proc interface are available only if
the kernel was configured and built with the CONFIG_NUMA option.
Library support
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. In-
stead, the higher level interface provided by the numa(3) functions in
the numactl package is recommended. The numactl package is available at
]8;;ftp://oss.sgi.com/www/projects/libnuma/download/\ftp://oss.sgi.com/www/projects/libnuma/download/]8;;\. The package is also
included in some Linux distributions. Some distributions include the
development library and header in the separate numactl-devel package.
SEE ALSO
get_mempolicy(2), mbind(2), move_pages(2), set_mempolicy(2), numa(3),
cpuset(7), numactl(8)
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