Re: [PATCH RFC 1/2] kvm: Handle undercommitted guest case in PLEhandler

[Raghavendra K T]

On 10/11/2012 12:57 AM, Andrew Theurer wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-10-10 at 23:13 +0530, Raghavendra K T wrote:
> > On 10/10/2012 07:54 PM, Andrew Theurer wrote:
> > > I ran 'perf sched map' on the dbench workload for medium and large VMs,
> > > and I thought I would share some of the results.  I think it helps to
> > > visualize what's going on regarding the yielding.
> > >
> > > These files are png bitmaps, generated from processing output from 'perf
> > > sched map' (and perf data generated from 'perf sched record').  The Y
> > > axis is the host cpus, each row being 10 pixels high.  For these tests,
> > > there are 80 host cpus, so the total height is 800 pixels.  The X axis
> > > is time (in microseconds), with each pixel representing 1 microsecond.
> > > Each bitmap plots 30,000 microseconds.  The bitmaps are quite wide
> > > obviously, and zooming in/out while viewing is recommended.
> > >
> > > Each row (each host cpu) is assigned a color based on what thread is
> > > running.  vCPUs of the same VM are assigned a common color (like red,
> > > blue, magenta, etc), and each vCPU has a unique brightness for that
> > > color.  There are a maximum of 12 assignable colors, so in any VMs >12
> > > revert to vCPU color of gray. I would use more colors, but it becomes
> > > harder to distinguish one color from another.  The white color
> > > represents missing data from perf, and black color represents any thread
> > > which is not a vCPU.
> > >
> > > For the following tests, VMs were pinned to host NUMA nodes and to
> > > specific cpus to help with consistency and operate within the
> > > constraints of the last test (gang scheduler).
> > >
> > > Here is a good example of PLE.  These are 10-way VMs, 16 of them (as
> > > described above only 12 of the VMs have a color, rest are gray).
> > >
> > > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wdmFqUmE5QjJHMFU
> >
> > This looks very nice to visualize what is happening. Beginning of the
> > graph looks little messy but later it is clear.
> >
> > > If you zoom out and look at the whole bitmap, you may notice the 4ms
> > > intervals of the scheduler.  They are pretty well aligned across all
> > > cpus.  Normally, for cpu bound workloads, we would expect to see each
> > > thread to run for 4 ms, then something else getting to run, and so on.
> > > That is mostly true in this test.  We have 2x over-commit and we
> > > generally see the switching of threads at 4ms.  One thing to note is
> > > that not all vCPU threads for the same VM run at exactly the same time,
> > > and that is expected and the whole reason for lock-holder preemption.
> > > Now, if you zoom in on the bitmap, you should notice within the 4ms
> > > intervals there is some task switching going on.  This is most likely
> > > because of the yield_to initiated by the PLE handler.  In this case
> > > there is not that much yielding to do.   It's quite clean, and the
> > > performance is quite good.
> > >
> > > Below is an example of PLE, but this time with 20-way VMs, 8 of them.
> > > CPU over-commit is still 2x.
> > >
> > > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wdmFqUmE5QjJHMFU
> >
> > I think this link still 10x16. Could you paste the link again?
>
> Oops
> https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wSGtYYzZtRTcyVjQ
>
> > > This one looks quite different.  In short, it's a mess.  The switching
> > > between tasks can be lower than 10 microseconds.  It basically never
> > > recovers.  There is constant yielding all the time.
> > >
> > > Below is again 8 x 20-way VMs, but this time I tried out Nikunj's gang
> > > scheduling patches.  While I am not recommending gang scheduling, I
> > > think it's a good data point.  The performance is 3.88x the PLE result.
> > >
> > > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wWXdscWcwNTVEY3M

Yes.. we see lot of yields.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/