Re: [RFC][PATCH] Improving directed yield scalability for PLEhandler

From: Andrew Theurer
Date: Fri Sep 07 2012 - 15:43:24 EST


On Fri, 2012-09-07 at 23:36 +0530, Raghavendra K T wrote:
> CCing PeterZ also.
>
> On 09/07/2012 06:41 PM, Andrew Theurer wrote:
> > I have noticed recently that PLE/yield_to() is still not that scalable
> > for really large guests, sometimes even with no CPU over-commit. I have
> > a small change that make a very big difference.
> >
> > First, let me explain what I saw:
> >
> > Time to boot a 3.6-rc kernel in an 80-way VM on a 4 socket, 40 core, 80
> > thread Westmere-EX system: 645 seconds!
> >
> > Host cpu: ~98% in kernel, nearly all of it in spin_lock from double
> > runqueue lock for yield_to()
> >
> > So, I added some schedstats to yield_to(), one to count when we failed
> > this test in yield_to()
> >
> > if (task_running(p_rq, p) || p->state)
> >
> > and one when we pass all the conditions and get to actually yield:
> >
> > yielded = curr->sched_class->yield_to_task(rq, p, preempt);
> >
> >
> > And during boot up of this guest, I saw:
> >
> >
> > failed yield_to() because task is running: 8368810426
> > successful yield_to(): 13077658
> > 0.156022% of yield_to calls
> > 1 out of 640 yield_to calls
> >
> > Obviously, we have a problem. Every exit causes a loop over 80 vcpus,
> > each one trying to get two locks. This is happening on all [but one]
> > vcpus at around the same time. Not going to work well.
> >
>
> True and interesting. I had once thought of reducing overall O(n^2)
> iteration to O(n log(n)) iterations by reducing number of candidates
> to search to O(log(n)) instead of current O(n). May be I have to get
> back to my experiment modes.
>
> > So, since the check for a running task is nearly always true, I moved
> > that -before- the double runqueue lock, so 99.84% of the attempts do not
> > take the locks. Now, I do not know is this [not getting the locks] is a
> > problem. However, I'd rather have a little inaccurate test for a
> > running vcpu than burning 98% of CPU in host kernel. With the change
> > the VM boot time went to: 100 seconds, an 85% reduction in time.
> >
> > I also wanted to check to see this did not affect truly over-committed
> > situations, so I first started with smaller VMs at 2x cpu over-commit:
> >
> > 16 VMs, 8-way each, all running dbench (2x cpu over-commmit)
> > throughput +/- stddev
> > ----- -----
> > ple off: 2281 +/- 7.32% (really bad as expected)
> > ple on: 19796 +/- 1.36%
> > ple on: w/fix: 19796 +/- 1.37% (no degrade at all)
> >
> > In this case the VMs are small enough, that we do not loop through
> > enough vcpus to trigger the problem. host CPU is very low (3-4% range)
> > for both default ple and with yield_to() fix.
> >
> > So I went on to a bigger VM:
> >
> > 10 VMs, 16-way each, all running dbench (2x cpu over-commit)
> > throughput +/- stddev
> > ----- -----
> > ple on: 2552 +/- .70%
> > ple on: w/fix: 4621 +/- 2.12% (81% improvement!)
> >
> > This is where we start seeing a major difference. Without the fix, host
> > cpu was around 70%, mostly in spin_lock. That was reduced to 60% (and
> > guest went from 30 to 40%). I believe this is on the right track to
> > reduce the spin lock contention, still get proper directed yield, and
> > therefore improve the guest CPU available and its performance.
> >
> > However, we still have lock contention, and I think we can reduce it
> > even more. We have eliminated some attempts at double runqueue lock
> > acquire because the check for the target vcpu is running is now before
> > the lock. However, even if the target-to-yield-to vcpu [for the same
> > guest upon we PLE exited] is not running, the physical
> > processor/runqueue that target-to-yield-to vcpu is located on could be
> > running a different VM's vcpu -and- going through a directed yield,
> > therefore that run queue lock may already acquired. We do not want to
> > just spin and wait, we want to move to the next candidate vcpu. We need
> > a check to see if the smp processor/runqueue is already in a directed
> > yield. Or, perhaps we just check if that cpu is not in guest mode, and
> > if so, we skip that yield attempt for that vcpu and move to the next
> > candidate vcpu. So, my question is: given a runqueue, what's the best
> > way to check if that corresponding phys cpu is not in guest mode?
> >
>
> We are indeed avoiding CPUS in guest mode when we check
> task->flags & PF_VCPU in vcpu_on_spin path. Doesn't that suffice?

My understanding is that it checks if the candidate vcpu task is in
guest mode (let's call this vcpu g1vcpuN), and that vcpu will not be a
target to yield to if it is already in guest mode. I am concerned about
a different vcpu, possibly from a different VM (let's call it g2vcpuN),
but it also located on the same runqueue as g1vcpuN -and- running. That
vcpu, g2vcpuN, may also be doing a directed yield, and it may already be
holding the rq lock. Or it could be in guest mode. If it is in guest
mode, then let's still target this rq, and try to yield to g1vcpuN.
However, if g2vcpuN is not in guest mode, then don't bother trying.
Patch include below.

Here's the new, v2 result with the previous two:

10 VMs, 16-way each, all running dbench (2x cpu over-commit)
throughput +/- stddev
----- -----
ple on: 2552 +/- .70%
ple on: w/fixv1: 4621 +/- 2.12% (81% improvement)
ple on: w/fixv2: 6115* (139% improvement)

[*] I do not have stdev yet because all 10 runs are not complete

for v1 to v2, host CPU dropped from 60% to 50%. Time in spin_lock() is
also dropping:

v1:
> 28.60% 264266 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] _raw_spin_lock
> 9.21% 85109 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] __schedule
> 4.98% 46035 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] _raw_spin_lock_irq
> 4.12% 38066 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] yield_to
> 4.01% 37114 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] kvm_vcpu_on_spin
> 3.52% 32507 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] get_pid_task
> 3.37% 31141 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] native_load_tr_desc
> 3.26% 30121 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] __vcpu_run
> 3.01% 27844 qemu-system-x86 [kvm_intel] [k] vmx_vcpu_run
> 2.98% 27592 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] resched_task
> 2.72% 25108 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] __srcu_read_lock
> 2.25% 20758 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] native_write_msr_safe
> 2.01% 18522 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] kvm_vcpu_yield_to
> 1.89% 17508 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] vcpu_enter_guest

v2:
> 10.12% 83285 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] __schedule
> 9.74% 80106 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] yield_to
> 7.38% 60686 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] get_pid_task
> 6.28% 51695 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] _raw_spin_lock
> 5.24% 43128 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] kvm_vcpu_on_spin
> 5.04% 41517 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] __srcu_read_lock
> 4.11% 33823 qemu-system-x86 [kvm_intel] [k] vmx_vcpu_run
> 3.62% 29827 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] native_load_tr_desc
> 3.57% 29413 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] kvm_vcpu_yield_to
> 3.44% 28297 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] __vcpu_run
> 2.93% 24116 qemu-system-x86 [kvm] [k] vcpu_enter_guest
> 2.60% 21379 qemu-system-x86 [kernel.kallsyms] [k] resched_task

So this seems to be working. However I wonder just how far we can take
this. Ideally we need to be in <3-4% in host for PLE work, like I
observe for the 8-way VMs. We are still way off.

-Andrew


signed-off-by: Andrew Theurer <habanero@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index fbf1fd0..c767915 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -4844,6 +4844,9 @@ bool __sched yield_to(struct task_struct *p, bool
preempt)

again:
p_rq = task_rq(p);
+ if (task_running(p_rq, p) || p->state || !(p_rq->curr->flags &
PF_VCPU)) {
+ goto out_no_unlock;
+ }
double_rq_lock(rq, p_rq);
while (task_rq(p) != p_rq) {
double_rq_unlock(rq, p_rq);
@@ -4856,8 +4859,6 @@ again:
if (curr->sched_class != p->sched_class)
goto out;

- if (task_running(p_rq, p) || p->state)
- goto out;

yielded = curr->sched_class->yield_to_task(rq, p, preempt);
if (yielded) {
@@ -4879,6 +4880,7 @@ again:

out:
double_rq_unlock(rq, p_rq);
+out_no_unlock:
local_irq_restore(flags);

if (yielded)


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