Re: [RFD PATCH 0/4] cpu: Bulk CPU Hotplug support.

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Wed Jun 17 2009 - 10:38:24 EST


On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 09:32:57AM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 13:37 +0530, Vaidyanathan Srinivasan wrote:
> > * Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [2009-06-15 23:23:18]:
> >
> > > On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:08:39 +0530 Gautham R Shenoy <ego@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Currently on a ppc64 box with 16 CPUs, the time taken for
> > > > a individual cpu-hotplug operation is as follows.
> > > >
> > > > # time echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
> > > > real 0m0.025s
> > > > user 0m0.000s
> > > > sys 0m0.002s
> > > >
> > > > # time echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
> > > > real 0m0.021s
> > > > user 0m0.000s
> > > > sys 0m0.000s
> > >
> > > Surprised. Do people really online and offline CPUs frequently enough
> > > for this to be a problem?
> >
> > Certainly not for hardware faults or hardware replacement, but
> > cpu-hotplug interface is useful for changing system configuration to
> > meet different objectives like
> >
> > * Reduce system capacity to reduce average power and reduce heat
> >
> > * Increasing number of cores and threads in a CPU package is leading
> > to multiple cpu offline/online operations for any perceivable effect
> >
> > * Dynamically change CPU configurations in virtualized environments
>
> I tend to agree with Andrew, if any of those things are done frequent
> enough that the hotplug performance matter you're doing something mighty
> odd.

Boot speedup?

Thanx, Paul
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