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  1. 14 Apr, 2021 2 commits
    • Thomas Gleixner's avatar
      signal: Allow tasks to cache one sigqueue struct · 4bad58eb
      Thomas Gleixner authored 
      The idea for this originates from the real time tree to make signal
delivery for realtime applications more efficient. In quite some of these
application scenarios a control tasks signals workers to start their
computations. There is usually only one signal per worker on flight.  This
works nicely as long as the kmem cache allocations do not hit the slow path
and cause latencies.

To cure this an optimistic caching was introduced (limited to RT tasks)
which allows a task to cache a single sigqueue in a pointer in task_struct
instead of handing it back to the kmem cache after consuming a signal. When
the next signal is sent to the task then the cached sigqueue is used
instead of allocating a new one. This solved the problem for this set of
application scenarios nicely.

The task cache is not preallocated so the first signal sent to a task goes
always to the cache allocator. The cached sigqueue stays around until the
task exits and is freed when task::sighand is dropped.

After posting this solution for mainline the discussion came up whether
this would be useful in general and should not be limited to realtime
tasks: https://lore.kernel.org/r/m11rcu7nbr.fsf@fess.ebiederm.org

One concern leading to the original limitation was to avoid a large amount
of pointlessly cached sigqueues in alive tasks. The other concern was
vs. RLIMIT_SIGPENDING as these cached sigqueues are not accounted for.

The accounting problem is real, but on the other hand slightly academic.
After gathering some statistics it turned out that after boot of a regular
distro install there are less than 10 sigqueues cached in ~1500 tasks.

In case of a 'mass fork and fire signal to child' scenario the extra 80
bytes of memory per task are well in the noise of the overall memory
consumption of the fork bomb.

If this should be limited then this would need an extra counter in struct
user, more atomic instructions and a seperate rlimit. Yet another tunable
which is mostly unused.

The caching is actually used. After boot and a full kernel compile on a
64CPU machine with make -j128 the number of 'allocations' looks like this:

  From slab:	   23996
  From task cache: 52223

I.e. it reduces the number of slab cache operations by ~68%.

A typical pattern there is:

<...>-58490 __sigqueue_alloc:  for 58488 from slab ffff8881132df460
<...>-58488 __sigqueue_free:   cache ffff8881132df460
<...>-58488 __sigqueue_alloc:  for 1149 from cache ffff8881103dc550
  bash-1149 exit_task_sighand: free ffff8881132df460
  bash-1149 __sigqueue_free:   cache ffff8881103dc550

The interesting sequence is that the exiting task 58488 grabs the sigqueue
from bash's task cache to signal exit and bash sticks it back into it's own
cache. Lather, rinse and repeat.

The caching is probably not noticable for the general use case, but the
benefit for latency sensitive applications is clear. While kmem caches are
usually just serving from the fast path the slab merging (default) can
depending on the usage pattern of the merged slabs cause occasional slow
path allocations.

The time spared per cached entry is a few micro seconds per signal which is
not relevant for e.g. a kernel build, but for signal heavy workloads it's
measurable.

As there is no real downside of this caching mechanism making it
unconditionally available is preferred over more conditional code or new
magic tunables.
Signed-off-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarOleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/87sg4lbmxo.fsf@nanos.tec.linutronix.de
      4bad58eb
    • Thomas Gleixner's avatar
      signal: Hand SIGQUEUE_PREALLOC flag to __sigqueue_alloc() · 69995ebb
      Thomas Gleixner authored 
      There is no point in having the conditional at the callsite.

Just hand in the allocation mode flag to __sigqueue_alloc() and use it to
initialize sigqueue::flags.

No functional change.
Signed-off-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210322092258.898677147@linutronix.de
      69995ebb
  3. 09 Apr, 2021 4 commits
    • Valentin Schneider's avatar
      sched/fair: Introduce a CPU capacity comparison helper · 4aed8aa4
      Valentin Schneider authored 
      During load-balance, groups classified as group_misfit_task are filtered
out if they do not pass

  group_smaller_max_cpu_capacity(<candidate group>, <local group>);

which itself employs fits_capacity() to compare the sgc->max_capacity of
both groups.

Due to the underlying margin, fits_capacity(X, 1024) will return false for
any X > 819. Tough luck, the capacity_orig's on e.g. the Pixel 4 are
{261, 871, 1024}. If a CPU-bound task ends up on one of those "medium"
CPUs, misfit migration will never intentionally upmigrate it to a CPU of
higher capacity due to the aforementioned margin.

One may argue the 20% margin of fits_capacity() is excessive in the advent
of counter-enhanced load tracking (APERF/MPERF, AMUs), but one point here
is that fits_capacity() is meant to compare a utilization value to a
capacity value, whereas here it is being used to compare two capacity
values. As CPU capacity and task utilization have different dynamics, a
sensible approach here would be to add a new helper dedicated to comparing
CPU capacities.

Also note that comparing capacity extrema of local and source sched_group's
doesn't make much sense when at the day of the day the imbalance will be
pulled by a known env->dst_cpu, whose capacity can be anywhere within the
local group's capacity extrema.

While at it, replace group_smaller_{min, max}_cpu_capacity() with
comparisons of the source group's min/max capacity and the destination
CPU's capacity.
Signed-off-by: default avatarValentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarDietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarQais Yousef <qais.yousef@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarVincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Tested-by: default avatarLingutla Chandrasekhar <clingutla@codeaurora.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210407220628.3798191-4-valentin.schneider@arm.com
      4aed8aa4
    • Valentin Schneider's avatar
      sched/fair: Clean up active balance nr_balance_failed trickery · 23fb06d9
      Valentin Schneider authored 
      When triggering an active load balance, sd->nr_balance_failed is set to
such a value that any further can_migrate_task() using said sd will ignore
the output of task_hot().

This behaviour makes sense, as active load balance intentionally preempts a
rq's running task to migrate it right away, but this asynchronous write is
a bit shoddy, as the stopper thread might run active_load_balance_cpu_stop
before the sd->nr_balance_failed write either becomes visible to the
stopper's CPU or even happens on the CPU that appended the stopper work.

Add a struct lb_env flag to denote active balancing, and use it in
can_migrate_task(). Remove the sd->nr_balance_failed write that served the
same purpose. Cleanup the LBF_DST_PINNED active balance special case.
Signed-off-by: default avatarValentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarDietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarVincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210407220628.3798191-3-valentin.schneider@arm.com
      23fb06d9
    • Lingutla Chandrasekhar's avatar
      sched/fair: Ignore percpu threads for imbalance pulls · 9bcb959d
      Lingutla Chandrasekhar authored 
      During load balance, LBF_SOME_PINNED will be set if any candidate task
cannot be detached due to CPU affinity constraints. This can result in
setting env->sd->parent->sgc->group_imbalance, which can lead to a group
being classified as group_imbalanced (rather than any of the other, lower
group_type) when balancing at a higher level.

In workloads involving a single task per CPU, LBF_SOME_PINNED can often be
set due to per-CPU kthreads being the only other runnable tasks on any
given rq. This results in changing the group classification during
load-balance at higher levels when in reality there is nothing that can be
done for this affinity constraint: per-CPU kthreads, as the name implies,
don't get to move around (modulo hotplug shenanigans).

It's not as clear for userspace tasks - a task could be in an N-CPU cpuset
with N-1 offline CPUs, making it an "accidental" per-CPU task rather than
an intended one. KTHREAD_IS_PER_CPU gives us an indisputable signal which
we can leverage here to not set LBF_SOME_PINNED.

Note that the aforementioned classification to group_imbalance (when
nothing can be done) is especially problematic on big.LITTLE systems, which
have a topology the likes of:

  DIE [          ]
  MC  [    ][    ]
       0  1  2  3
       L  L  B  B

  arch_scale_cpu_capacity(L) < arch_scale_cpu_capacity(B)

Here, setting LBF_SOME_PINNED due to a per-CPU kthread when balancing at MC
level on CPUs [0-1] will subsequently prevent CPUs [2-3] from classifying
the [0-1] group as group_misfit_task when balancing at DIE level. Thus, if
CPUs [0-1] are running CPU-bound (misfit) tasks, ill-timed per-CPU kthreads
can significantly delay the upgmigration of said misfit tasks. Systems
relying on ASYM_PACKING are likely to face similar issues.
Signed-off-by: default avatarLingutla Chandrasekhar <clingutla@codeaurora.org>
[Use kthread_is_per_cpu() rather than p->nr_cpus_allowed]
[Reword changelog]
Signed-off-by: default avatarValentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarDietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
Reviewed-by: default avatarVincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210407220628.3798191-2-valentin.schneider@arm.com
      9bcb959d
    • Rik van Riel's avatar
      sched/fair: Bring back select_idle_smt(), but differently · c722f35b
      Rik van Riel authored 
      Mel Gorman did some nice work in 9fe1f127 ("sched/fair: Merge
select_idle_core/cpu()"), resulting in the kernel being more efficient
at finding an idle CPU, and in tasks spending less time waiting to be
run, both according to the schedstats run_delay numbers, and according
to measured application latencies. Yay.

The flip side of this is that we see more task migrations (about 30%
more), higher cache misses, higher memory bandwidth utilization, and
higher CPU use, for the same number of requests/second.

This is most pronounced on a memcache type workload, which saw a
consistent 1-3% increase in total CPU use on the system, due to those
increased task migrations leading to higher L2 cache miss numbers, and
higher memory utilization. The exclusive L3 cache on Skylake does us
no favors there.

On our web serving workload, that effect is usually negligible.

It appears that the increased number of CPU migrations is generally a
good thing, since it leads to lower cpu_delay numbers, reflecting the
fact that tasks get to run faster. However, the reduced locality and
the corresponding increase in L2 cache misses hurts a little.

The patch below appears to fix the regression, while keeping the
benefit of the lower cpu_delay numbers, by reintroducing
select_idle_smt with a twist: when a socket has no idle cores, check
to see if the sibling of "prev" is idle, before searching all the
other CPUs.

This fixes both the occasional 9% regression on the web serving
workload, and the continuous 2% CPU use regression on the memcache
type workload.

With Mel's patches and this patch together, task migrations are still
high, but L2 cache misses, memory bandwidth, and CPU time used are
back down to what they were before. The p95 and p99 response times for
the memcache type application improve by about 10% over what they were
before Mel's patches got merged.
Signed-off-by: default avatarRik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Reviewed-by: default avatarMel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: default avatarVincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210326151932.2c187840@imladris.surriel.com
      c722f35b
  5. 08 Apr, 2021 1 commit
  7. 25 Mar, 2021 3 commits
  9. 23 Mar, 2021 4 commits
  11. 21 Mar, 2021 1 commit
    • Ingo Molnar's avatar
      sched: Fix various typos · 3b03706f
      Ingo Molnar authored 
      Fix ~42 single-word typos in scheduler code comments.

We have accumulated a few fun ones over the years. :-)
Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>
Cc: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>
Cc: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Cc: Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
      3b03706f
  13. 17 Mar, 2021 1 commit
  15. 10 Mar, 2021 2 commits
  17. 06 Mar, 2021 22 commits
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