Add TUNING.md.

Author: interwq

TUNING.md

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+This document summarizes the common approaches for performance fine tuning with
+jemalloc (as of 5.1.0).  The default configuration of jemalloc tends to work
+reasonably well in practice, and most applications should not have to tune any
+options. However, in order to cover a wide range of applications and avoid
+pathological cases, the default setting is sometimes kept conservative and
+suboptimal, even for many common workloads.  When jemalloc is properly tuned for
+a specific application / workload, it is common to improve system level metrics
+by a few percent, or make favorable trade-offs.
+
+
+## Notable runtime options for performance tuning
+
+Runtime options can be set via
+[malloc_conf](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#tuning).
+
+* [background_thread](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#background_thread)
+
+    Enabling jemalloc background threads generally improves the tail latency for
+    application threads, since unused memory purging is shifted to the dedicated
+    background threads.  In addition, unintended purging delay caused by
+    application inactivity is avoided with background threads.
+
+    Suggested: `background_thread:true` when jemalloc managed threads can be
+    allowed.
+
+* [metadata_thp](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#opt.metadata_thp)
+
+    Allowing jemalloc to utilize transparent huge pages for its internal
+    metadata usually reduces TLB misses significantly, especially for programs
+    with large memory footprint and frequent allocation / deallocation
+    activities.  Metadata memory usage may increase due to the use of huge
+    pages.
+
+    Suggested for allocation intensive programs: `metadata_thp:auto` or
+    `metadata_thp:always`, which is expected to improve CPU utilization at a
+    small memory cost.
+
+* [dirty_decay_ms](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#opt.dirty_decay_ms) and
+  [muzzy_decay_ms](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#opt.muzzy_decay_ms)
+
+    Decay time determines how fast jemalloc returns unused pages back to the
+    operating system, and therefore provides a fairly straightforward trade-off
+    between CPU and memory usage.  Shorter decay time purges unused pages faster
+    to reduces memory usage (usually at the cost of more CPU cycles spent on
+    purging), and vice versa.
+
+    Suggested: tune the values based on the desired trade-offs.
+
+* [narenas](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#opt.narenas)
+
+    By default jemalloc uses multiple arenas to reduce internal lock contention.
+    However high arena count may also increase overall memory fragmentation,
+    since arenas manage memory independently.  When high degree of parallelism
+    is not expected at the allocator level, lower number of arenas often
+    improves memory usage.
+
+    Suggested: if low parallelism is expected, try lower arena count while
+    monitoring CPU and memory usage.
+
+* [percpu_arena](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#opt.percpu_arena)
+
+    Enable dynamic thread to arena association based on running CPU.  This has
+    the potential to improve locality, e.g. when thread to CPU affinity is
+    present.
+    
+    Suggested: try `percpu_arena:percpu` or `percpu_arena:phycpu` if
+    thread migration between processors is expected to be infrequent.
+
+Examples:
+
+* High resource consumption application, prioritizing CPU utilization:
+
+    `background_thread:true,metadata_thp:auto` combined with relaxed decay time
+    (increased `dirty_decay_ms` and / or `muzzy_decay_ms`,
+    e.g. `dirty_decay_ms:30000,muzzy_decay_ms:30000`).
+
+* High resource consumption application, prioritizing memory usage:
+
+    `background_thread:true` combined with shorter decay time (decreased
+    `dirty_decay_ms` and / or `muzzy_decay_ms`,
+    e.g. `dirty_decay_ms:5000,muzzy_decay_ms:5000`), and lower arena count
+    (e.g. number of CPUs).
+
+* Low resource consumption application:
+
+    `narenas:1,lg_tcache_max:13` combined with shorter decay time (decreased
+    `dirty_decay_ms` and / or `muzzy_decay_ms`,e.g.
+    `dirty_decay_ms:1000,muzzy_decay_ms:0`).
+
+* Extremely conservative -- minimize memory usage at all costs, only suitable when
+allocation activity is very rare:
+
+    `narenas:1,tcache:false,dirty_decay_ms:0,muzzy_decay_ms:0`
+
+Note that it is recommended to combine the options with `abort_conf:true` which
+aborts immediately on illegal options.
+
+## Beyond runtime options
+
+In addition to the runtime options, there are a number of programmatic ways to
+improve application performance with jemalloc.
+
+* [Explicit arenas](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#arenas.create)
+
+    Manually created arenas can help performance in various ways, e.g. by
+    managing locality and contention for specific usages.  For example,
+    applications can explicitly allocate frequently accessed objects from a
+    dedicated arena with
+    [mallocx()](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#MALLOCX_ARENA) to improve
+    locality.  In addition, explicit arenas often benefit from individually
+    tuned options, e.g. relaxed [decay
+    time](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#arena.i.dirty_decay_ms) if
+    frequent reuse is expected.
+
+* [Extent hooks](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#arena.i.extent_hooks)
+
+    Extent hooks allow customization for managing underlying memory.  One use
+    case for performance purpose is to utilize huge pages -- for example,
+    [HHVM](https://github.com/facebook/hhvm/blob/master/hphp/util/alloc.cpp)
+    uses explicit arenas with customized extent hooks to manage 1GB huge pages
+    for frequently accessed data, which reduces TLB misses significantly.
+
+* [Explicit thread-to-arena
+  binding](http://jemalloc.net/jemalloc.3.html#thread.arena)
+
+    It is common for some threads in an application to have different memory
+    access / allocation patterns.  Threads with heavy workloads often benefit
+    from explicit binding, e.g. binding very active threads to dedicated arenas
+    may reduce contention at the allocator level.