On 12 December 2012 14:55, Alex Shi <lkml.a...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> well... it's not always beneficial to group or to spread out >>>>> it depends on cache behavior mostly which is best >>>> >>>> >>>> Let me try to understand what this means: so "performance" above with >>>> 8 threads means that those threads are spread out across more than one >>>> socket, no? >>>> >>>> If so, this would mean that you have a smaller amount of tasks on each >>>> socket, thus the smaller wattage. >>>> >>>> The "powersaving" method OTOH fills up the one socket up to the brim, >>>> thus the slightly higher consumption due to all threads being occupied. >>>> >>>> Is that it? >>> >>> >>> not sure. >>> >>> by and large, power efficiency is the same as performance efficiency, with >>> some twists. >>> or to reword that to be more clear >>> if you waste performance due to something that becomes inefficient, you're >>> wasting power as well. >>> now, you might have some hardware effects that can then save you power... >>> but those effects >>> then first need to overcome the waste from the performance inefficiency... >>> and that almost never happens. >>> >>> for example, if you have two workloads that each fit barely inside the last >>> level cache... >>> it's much more efficient to spread these over two sockets... where each has >>> its own full LLC >>> to use. >>> If you'd group these together, both would thrash the cache all the time and >>> run inefficient --> bad for power. >>> >>> now, on the other hand, if you have two threads of a process that share a >>> bunch of data structures, >>> and you'd spread these over 2 sockets, you end up bouncing data between the >>> two sockets a lot, >>> running inefficient --> bad for power. >>> >> >> Agree with all of the above. However.. >> >>> having said all this, if you have to tasks that don't have such cache >>> effects, the most efficient way >>> of running things will be on 2 hyperthreading halves... it's very hard to >>> beat the power efficiency of that. >> >> .. there are alternatives to hyperthreading. On ARM's big.LITTLE >> architecture you could simply schedule them on the LITTLE cores. The >> big cores just can't beat the power efficiency of the LITTLE ones even >> with 'race to halt' that you allude to below. And usecases like mp3 >> playback simply don't require the kind of performance that the big >> cores can offer. >> >>> But this assumes the tasks don't compete with resources much on the HT >>> level, and achieve good scaling. >>> and this still has to compete with "race to halt", because if you're done >>> quicker, you can put the memory >>> in self refresh quicker. >>> >>> none of this stuff is easy for humans or computer programs to determine >>> ahead of time... or sometimes even afterwards. >>> heck, even for just performance it's really really hard already, never mind >>> adding power. >>> >>> my personal gut feeling is that we should just optimize this scheduler stuff >>> for performance, and that >>> we're going to be doing quite well on power already if we achieve that. >> >> If Linux is to continue to work efficiently on heterogeneous >> multi-processing platforms, it needs to provide scheduling mechanisms >> that can be exploited as per the demands of the HW architecture. > > Linus definitely disagree such ideas. :) So, need to summaries the > logical beyond all hardware. > >> example is the "small task packing (and spreading)" for which Vincent >> Guittot has posted a patchset[1] earlier and so has Alex now. > > Sure. I just thought my patchset should handled the 'small task > packing' scenario. Could you guy like to have a try?
Hi Alex, Yes, I will do a try with your patchset when i will have some spare time Vincent >> >> [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/518834/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/