Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On Tue, 12 Oct 2010, Andi Kleen wrote: > Thomas Gleixner writes: > > We have told HPC folks for years that we need a kind of "NOHZ" mode > > for HPC where we can transparently switch off the tick when only one > > user space bound thread is active and switch back to normal once this > > thing terminates or goes into the kernel via a syscall. Sigh, nothing > > happened ever except for repeating the same crap patches over and > > over. > > Jan Blunck posted a patch for this exactly few months ago. > Unfortunately it didn't get the accounting right, but other than > that it seemed like a reasonable starting point. Unfortunately it did not get a lot of other things right either. Thanks, tglx ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
Thomas Gleixner writes: > On Mon, 11 Oct 2010, Tim Pepper wrote: > >> I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is >> a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for >> HPC applications and this came up... > > Yeah. This comes always up when the timer tick overhead on HPC is > tested. And this patch is again the fundamentally wrong answer. That's a unfair description of the proposal. > We have told HPC folks for years that we need a kind of "NOHZ" mode > for HPC where we can transparently switch off the tick when only one > user space bound thread is active and switch back to normal once this > thing terminates or goes into the kernel via a syscall. Sigh, nothing > happened ever except for repeating the same crap patches over and > over. Jan Blunck posted a patch for this exactly few months ago. Unfortunately it didn't get the accounting right, but other than that it seemed like a reasonable starting point. -Andi -- a...@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only. ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On 10/11/2010 03:33 PM, Thomas Gleixner wrote: > On Tue, 12 Oct 2010, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > >> On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 13:11 -0700, Tim Pepper wrote: >>> I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is >>> a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for >>> HPC applications and this came up... >> >> Note that this is also very useful when working on CPU prototypes >> implemented in FPGAs and running at something like 12Mhz :-) > > /me hands benh 0.5$ for a FPGA upgrade That's often not possible if the CPU cannot be mapped onto a single FPGA (either because the core is too large, multiple cores are tested, or because there is debugging logic is included.) The interconnects slows things down tremendously. -hpa ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On Mon 11 Oct at 22:32:06 +0200 t...@linutronix.de said: > On Mon, 11 Oct 2010, Tim Pepper wrote: > > > I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is > > a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for > > HPC applications and this came up... > > Yeah. This comes always up when the timer tick overhead on HPC is > tested. And this patch is again the fundamentally wrong answer. Yep. Long term no hz is definitely the goal. I'm not sufficiently connected to the -rt space I guess to have followed that there's somebody again looking in that direction. The rfc patch was mostly just a minimal is there anything simple we can do in the meantime exercise. > We have told HPC folks for years that we need a kind of "NOHZ" mode > for HPC where we can transparently switch off the tick when only one > user space bound thread is active and switch back to normal once this > thing terminates or goes into the kernel via a syscall. I'd not heard of this in between NOHZ-y idea...sounds promising. We'd talked about different non-idle no hz approaches in the past year or so, some of which were on the veeery complicated side of the spectrum. > Sigh, nothing > happened ever except for repeating the same crap patches over and > over. I'll check out what Frederic is doing. Thanks for the pointer and apologies for the noise. -- Tim Pepper IBM Linux Technology Center ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On Tue, 12 Oct 2010, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 13:11 -0700, Tim Pepper wrote: > > I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is > > a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for > > HPC applications and this came up... > > Note that this is also very useful when working on CPU prototypes > implemented in FPGAs and running at something like 12Mhz :-) /me hands benh 0.5$ for a FPGA upgrade ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On Mon, 2010-10-11 at 13:11 -0700, Tim Pepper wrote: > I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is > a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for > HPC applications and this came up... Note that this is also very useful when working on CPU prototypes implemented in FPGAs and running at something like 12Mhz :-) Cheers, Ben. > Below is a minimal hack at enabling lower HZ values. The kernel builds > and boots for me on x86_64 (simple laptop and kvm configs) and ppc64 > (misc. IBM System p) with each of the added HZ options. > > There's explicit code checking HZ down to 12, but HZ<100 wasn't a config > option. We collected some data at 10, 12 and 25. There'd been some > question of whether 10 would even work or not but it looks fine in the > relatively minimal testing we did. We tried 12 since the code seemed > to allow for it. And 25 as a "safe" lower value. The only difference > observed under load (ie: no no idle HZ in play) was the expected timer > tick happening less often. There was definitely surprise that nothing > else seemed to break anywhere, especially at 10. > > Do people feel it is reasonable to have Kconfig bits to allow some lower > HZ values? > > If so, then there's the question of what breaks. It's reasonable to > think there are other going to be subtleties buried in code around > assumptions on the likely range of HZ: > > - I'm not sure that what I did in inet_timewait_sock.h and jiffies.h is > reasonable. > - arch/x86/kernel/i8253.c throws a warning at line 43 (v2.6.36-rc7): > warning: large integer implicitly truncated to unsigned type > - drivers/char/cyclades.c's cy_ioctl() warns: > drivers/char/cyclades.c:2761: warning: division by zero > - drivers, drivers, drivers across all the arch's could use sanity checking > ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
Re: [RFC] [PATCH] allow low HZ values?
On Mon, 11 Oct 2010, Tim Pepper wrote: > I'm not necessarily wanting to open up the age old question of "what is > a good HZ", but we were doing some testing on timer tick overheads for > HPC applications and this came up... Yeah. This comes always up when the timer tick overhead on HPC is tested. And this patch is again the fundamentally wrong answer. We have told HPC folks for years that we need a kind of "NOHZ" mode for HPC where we can transparently switch off the tick when only one user space bound thread is active and switch back to normal once this thing terminates or goes into the kernel via a syscall. Sigh, nothing happened ever except for repeating the same crap patches over and over. FYI, Frederic is working on that right now. He will talk about it at the plumbers RT microconf, so you might catch him there. Thanks, tglx ___ Linuxppc-dev mailing list Linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/linuxppc-dev
