Re: [PATCH 4/5] x86: Add config variables for SMP_MAX

From: Mike Travis
Date: Fri Jan 18 2008 - 15:55:29 EST


Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Mike Travis <travis@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>>> +config THREAD_ORDER
>>>> + int "Kernel stack size (in page order)"
>>>> + range 1 3
>>>> + depends on X86_64_SMP
>>>> + default "3" if X86_SMP_MAX
>>>> + default "1"
>>>> + help
>>>> + Increases kernel stack size.
>>>> +
>>> Could you please elaborate, why this is needed and put more info
>>> about this requirement into this patch description?
>>>
>>> People worked hard to push data allocation from stack to heap to
>>> make THREAD_ORDER of 0 and 1 possible. So why increase it again and
>>> why does this help scalability?
>>>
>>> Many thanks and Best Regards
>>>
>>> Ingo Oeser, puzzled a bit :-)
>>
>> The primary problem arises because of cpumask_t local variables.
>> Until I can deal with these, increasing NR_CPUS to a really large
>> value increases stack size dramatically.
>
> those should be fixed:
>
>> Here are the top stack consumers with NR_CPUS = 4k.
>>
>> 16392 isolated_cpu_setup
>> 10328 build_sched_domains
>> 8248 numa_initmem_init
>> 4664 cpu_attach_domain
>> 4104 show_shared_cpu_map
>> 3656 centrino_target
>> 3608 powernowk8_cpu_init
>> 3192 sched_domain_node_span
>> 3144 acpi_cpufreq_target
>> 2584 __svc_create_thread
>> 2568 cpu_idle_wait
>> 2136 netxen_nic_flash_print
>> 2104 powernowk8_target
>> 2088 _cpu_down
>> 2072 cache_add_dev
>> 2056 get_cur_freq
>> 0 acpi_processor_ffh_cstate_probe
>> 2056 microcode_write
>> 0 acpi_processor_get_throttling
>> 2048 check_supported_cpu
>
> (and most of that is performance-uncritical.)
>
> Ingo

How big is the stack during early startup?

Thanks,
Mike
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