On Mon, 2010-12-20 at 16:24 +0100, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
quoted text
> The timer interrupt handles several things like preemption,
> timekeeping, rcu, etc...
> 
> However it appears that sometimes it is simply useless like
> when a task runs alone and even more when it is in userspace
> as RCU doesn't need it at all in such case.
> 
> It appears that HPC workload would get some win of such timer
> deactivation, and perhaps also the Real Time world as this
> minimizes the critical sections due to way less interrupts to
> handle.
> 
> It works through the procfs interface:
> 
> echo 1 > /proc/self/nohz

I wounder if we could just have this happen automatically.

quoted text
> 
> With the following constraints:
> 
> - A cpu can have only one nohz task
> - A nohz task must be affine to a single CPU. That affinity can't
> change while the task is in this mode

If the above is the case, perhaps we could have this disable HZ on that
CPU.

quoted text
> - This must be written in /proc/self only, however further
> plans to allow than to be set from another task should be
> possible.
> 
> You need to migrate irqs manually from userspace, same
> for tasks. If a non nohz task is running on the same cpu
> than a nohz task, the tick can't be stopped.

So interrupts must not be set to this CPU?

quoted text
> 
> I can provide you the tools I'm using to test it if you
> want.
> 
> Note this depends on the rcu spurious softirq fixes in Paul's
> queue for .38
> 
> I'm also using a hack to make init affine to the first CPU
> on boot so that all userspace tasks end up to the first CPU
> except kernel threads and tasks that change their affinity
> explicitly (this is not sched isolation). This avoids any
> task to set up timers to random CPUs on which we'll later
> want to run a nohz task. But probably this can be fixed
> with another way, like unbinding these timers or so. This
> probably require a detailed audit.

Have you looked at "tuna"?

quoted text
> 
> Any comments are welcome.

Now as I was saying. If only a single running task is on a given CPU,
and it is affined there. If no timers are set for wakeups on that CPU.
Could we possible set this to be NOHZ automatically?

Just a thought.

-- Steve


quoted text
> 
> You can fetch from:
> 
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/frederic/random-tracing.git
> 	sched/nohz-task
> 
> Frederic Weisbecker (15):
>   nohz_task: New mask for cpus having nohz task
>   nohz_task: Avoid nohz task cpu as non-idle timer target
>   nohz_task: Make tick stop and restart callable outside idle
>   nohz_task: Stop the tick when the nohz task runs alone
>   nohz_task: Restart the tick when another task compete on the cpu
>   nohz_task: Keep the tick if rcu needs it
>   nohz_task: Restart tick when RCU forces nohz task cpu quiescent state
>   smp: Don't warn if irq are disabled but we don't wait for the ipi
>   rcu: Make rcu_enter,exit_nohz() callable from irq
>   nohz_task: Enter in extended quiescent state when in userspace
>   x86: Nohz task support
>   clocksource: Ignore nohz task cpu in clocksource watchdog
>   sched: Protect nohz task cpu affinity
>   nohz_task: Clear nohz task attribute on exit()
>   nohz_task: Procfs interface
> 
>  arch/Kconfig                       |    7 ++
>  arch/x86/Kconfig                   |    1 +
>  arch/x86/include/asm/thread_info.h |   10 ++-
>  arch/x86/kernel/ptrace.c           |   10 +++
>  arch/x86/kernel/traps.c            |   22 ++++--
>  arch/x86/mm/fault.c                |   13 +++-
>  fs/proc/base.c                     |   80 +++++++++++++++++++++
>  include/linux/cpumask.h            |    8 ++
>  include/linux/rcupdate.h           |    1 +
>  include/linux/sched.h              |    9 +++
>  include/linux/tick.h               |   26 +++++++-
>  kernel/cpu.c                       |   15 ++++
>  kernel/exit.c                      |    3 +
>  kernel/rcutree.c                   |  127 +++++++++++++++------------------
>  kernel/rcutree.h                   |   12 ++--
>  kernel/sched.c                     |  135 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
>  kernel/smp.c                       |    2 +-
>  kernel/softirq.c                   |    4 +-
>  kernel/time/Kconfig                |    7 ++
>  kernel/time/clocksource.c          |   10 ++-
>  kernel/time/tick-sched.c           |  138 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
>  21 files changed, 535 insertions(+), 105 deletions(-)
> 


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