If there are shared processor LPARs, underlying Hypervisor can have more virtual cores to handle than actual physical cores.
Starting with Power 9, a core has 2 nearly independent thread groups. On a shared processors LPARs, it helps to pack threads to lesser number of cores so that the overall system performance and utilization improves. PowerVM schedules at a core level. Hence packing to fewer cores helps. For example: Lets says there are two 8-core Shared LPARs that are actually sharing a 8 Core shared physical pool, each running 8 threads each. Then Consolidating 8 threads to 4 cores on each LPAR would help them to perform better. This is because each of the LPAR will get 100% time to run applications and there will no switching required by the Hypervisor. To achieve this, enable SD_ASYM_PACKING flag at CACHE, MC and DIE level. Signed-off-by: Srikar Dronamraju <sri...@linux.vnet.ibm.com> --- Changelog: v1->v2: Using static key instead of a variable. arch/powerpc/kernel/smp.c | 17 +++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/arch/powerpc/kernel/smp.c b/arch/powerpc/kernel/smp.c index 37c41297c9ce..498c2d51fc20 100644 --- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/smp.c +++ b/arch/powerpc/kernel/smp.c @@ -1009,9 +1009,20 @@ static int powerpc_smt_flags(void) */ static int powerpc_shared_cache_flags(void) { + if (static_branch_unlikely(&powerpc_asym_packing)) + return SD_SHARE_PKG_RESOURCES | SD_ASYM_PACKING; + return SD_SHARE_PKG_RESOURCES; } +static int powerpc_shared_proc_flags(void) +{ + if (static_branch_unlikely(&powerpc_asym_packing)) + return SD_ASYM_PACKING; + + return 0; +} + /* * We can't just pass cpu_l2_cache_mask() directly because * returns a non-const pointer and the compiler barfs on that. @@ -1048,8 +1059,8 @@ static struct sched_domain_topology_level powerpc_topology[] = { { cpu_smt_mask, powerpc_smt_flags, SD_INIT_NAME(SMT) }, #endif { shared_cache_mask, powerpc_shared_cache_flags, SD_INIT_NAME(CACHE) }, - { cpu_mc_mask, SD_INIT_NAME(MC) }, - { cpu_cpu_mask, SD_INIT_NAME(DIE) }, + { cpu_mc_mask, powerpc_shared_proc_flags, SD_INIT_NAME(MC) }, + { cpu_cpu_mask, powerpc_shared_proc_flags, SD_INIT_NAME(DIE) }, { NULL, }, }; @@ -1687,6 +1698,8 @@ static void __init fixup_topology(void) if (cpu_has_feature(CPU_FTR_ASYM_SMT)) { pr_info_once("Enabling Asymmetric SMT scheduling\n"); static_branch_enable(&powerpc_asym_packing); + } else if (is_shared_processor() && has_big_cores) { + static_branch_enable(&powerpc_asym_packing); } #ifdef CONFIG_SCHED_SMT -- 2.31.1