The proactive compaction[1] gets triggered for every 500msec and run
compaction on the node for COMPACTION_HPAGE_ORDER (usually order-9)
pages based on the value set to sysctl.compaction_proactiveness.
Triggering the compaction for every 500msec in search of
COMPACTION_HPAGE_ORDER pages is not needed for all applications,
especially on the embedded system usecases which may have few MB's of
RAM. Enabling the proactive compaction in its state will endup in
running almost always on such systems.
Other side, proactive compaction can still be very much useful for
getting a set of higher order pages in some controllable
manner(controlled by using the sysctl.compaction_proactiveness). Thus on
systems where enabling the proactive compaction always may proove not
required, can trigger the same from user space on write to its sysctl
interface. As an example, say app launcher decide to launch the memory
heavy application which can be launched fast if it gets more higher
order pages thus launcher can prepare the system in advance by
triggering the proactive compaction from userspace.
This triggering of proactive compaction is done on a write to
sysctl.compaction_proactiveness by user.
[1]https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit?id=facdaa917c4d5a376d09d25865f5a863f906234a
Bug: 186387247
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/1438211/
Signed-off-by: Charan Teja Reddy <charante@codeaurora.org>
Change-Id: Ie5208e274b9d7e7354471bb98ff1f10becf93595
71fdbce075
