Re: [git pull] cpus4096 fixes

From: Mike Travis
Date: Mon Jul 28 2008 - 14:24:20 EST


Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Monday 28 July 2008 18:16:39 Ingo Molnar wrote:
>> * Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> Mike: I now think the right long-term answer is Linus' dense cpumap
>>> idea + a convenience allocator for cpumasks. We sweep the kernel for
>>> all on-stack vars and replace them with one or the other. Thoughts?
>> The dense cpumap for constant cpumasks is OK as it's clever, compact and
>> static.
>>
>> All-dynamic allocator for on-stack cpumasks ... is a less obvious
>> choice.
>
> Sorry, I was unclear. "long-term" == "more than 4096 CPUs", since I thought
> that was Mike's aim. If we only want to hack up 4k CPUS and stop, then I
> understand the current approach.
>
> If we want huge cpu numbers, I think cpumask_alloc/free gives the clearest
> code. So our approach is backwards: let's do that *then* put ugly hacks in
> if it's really too slow.
>
> Cheers,
> Rusty.

Well, yes, "long-term" is not really that long and the system will be capable
of supporting 16k cpus. With the limit on clock scalability, core count is
going through the roof. Fortunately, we have a whole new release cycle to
rethink some basic ideas.

I did bring up a number of suggestions on how to replace cpumask_t, but they
all seemed to hamper small systems in one way or another. And the goal, again
was to minimize impact for 99.99% of the systems that won't have a thousand
or more cpus. (Though it only takes 8 Larrabee chips to attain that.)

Thanks,
Mike
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