On Tue, 2013-07-16 at 22:20 +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 12:21:03PM -0700, Jason Low wrote: > > When running benchmarks on an 8 socket 80 core machine with a 3.10 kernel, > > there can be a lot of contention in idle_balance() and related functions. > > On many AIM7 workloads in which CPUs go idle very often and idle balance > > gets called a lot, it is actually lowering performance. > > > > Since idle balance often helps performance (when it is not overused), I > > looked into trying to avoid attempting idle balance only when it is > > occurring too frequently. > > > > This RFC patch attempts to keep track of the approximate "average" time > > between > > idle balance attempts per CPU. Each time the idle_balance() function is > > invoked, it will compute the duration since the last idle_balance() for > > the current CPU. The avg time between idle balance attempts is then updated > > using a very similar method as how rq->avg_idle is computed. > > > > Once the average time between idle balance attempts drops below a certain > > value (which in this patch is sysctl_sched_idle_balance_limit), idle_balance > > for that CPU will be skipped. The average time between idle balances will > > continue to be updated, even if it ends up getting skipped. The > > initial/maximum average is set a lot higher though to make sure that the > > avg doesn't fall below the threshold until the sample size is large and to > > prevent the avg from being overestimated. > > One of the things I've been talking about for a while now is how I'd > like to use the idle guestimator used for cpuidle for newidle balance. > > Basically based on the estimated idle time limit how far/wide you'll > search for tasks to run. > > You can remove the sysctl and auto-tune by measuring how long it takes > on avg to do a newidle balance.
Hi Peter, When you say how long it takes on avg to do a newidle balance, are you referring to the avg time it takes for each call to CPU_NEWLY_IDLE load_balance() to complete, or the avg time it takes for newidle balance attempts within a domain to eventually successfully pull/move a task(s)? Thanks, Jason -- 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/