Re: [PATCH] sched/fair: Do not decay new task load on first enqueue

From: Matt Fleming
Date: Tue Oct 11 2016 - 06:25:20 EST


On Mon, 10 Oct, at 07:34:40PM, Vincent Guittot wrote:
>
> Subject: [PATCH] sched: use load_avg for selecting idlest group
>
> select_busiest_group only compares the runnable_load_avg when looking for
> the idlest group. But on fork intensive use case like hackbenchw here task
> blocked quickly after the fork, this can lead to selecting the same CPU
> whereas other CPUs, which have similar runnable load but a lower load_avg,
> could be chosen instead.
>
> When the runnable_load_avg of 2 CPUs are close, we now take into account
> the amount of blocked load as a 2nd selection factor.
>
> For use case like hackbench, this enable the scheduler to select different
> CPUs during the fork sequence and to spread tasks across the system.
>
> Tests have been done on a Hikey board (ARM based octo cores) for several
> kernel. The result below gives min, max, avg and stdev values of 18 runs
> with each configuration.
>
> The v4.8+patches configuration also includes the changes below which is part of the
> proposal made by Peter to ensure that the clock will be up to date when the
> fork task will be attached to the rq.
>
> @@ -2568,6 +2568,7 @@ void wake_up_new_task(struct task_struct *p)
> __set_task_cpu(p, select_task_rq(p, task_cpu(p), SD_BALANCE_FORK, 0));
> #endif
> rq = __task_rq_lock(p, &rf);
> + update_rq_clock(rq);
> post_init_entity_util_avg(&p->se);
>
> activate_task(rq, p, 0);
>
> hackbench -P -g 1
>
> ea86cb4b7621 7dc603c9028e v4.8 v4.8+patches
> min 0.049 0.050 0.051 0,048
> avg 0.057 0.057(0%) 0.057(0%) 0,055(+5%)
> max 0.066 0.068 0.070 0,063
> stdev +/-9% +/-9% +/-8% +/-9%
>
> Signed-off-by: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> kernel/sched/fair.c | 40 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------
> 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

This patch looks pretty good to me and this 2-socket 48-cpu Xeon
(domain0 SMT, domain1 MC, domain2 NUMA) shows a few nice performance
improvements, and no regressions for various combinations of hackbench
sockets/pipes and group numbers.

But on a 2-socket 8-cpu Xeon (domain0 MC, domain1 DIE) running,

perf stat --null -r 25 -- hackbench -pipe 30 process 1000

I see a regression,

baseline: 2.41228
patched : 2.64528 (-9.7%)

Even though the spread of tasks during fork[0] is improved,

baseline CV: 0.478%
patched CV : 0.042%

Clearly the spread wasn't *that* bad to begin with on this machine for
this workload. I consider the baseline spread to be pretty well
distributed. Some other factor must be at play.

Patched runqueue latencies are higher (max9* are percentiles),

baseline: mean: 615932.69 max90: 75272.00 max95: 175985.00 max99: 5884778.00 max: 1694084747.00
patched: mean : 882026.28 max90: 92015.00 max95: 291760.00 max99: 7590167.00 max: 1841154776.00

And there are more migrations of hackbench tasks,

baseline: total: 5390 cross-MC: 3810 cross-DIE: 1580
patched : total: 7222 cross-MC: 4591 cross-DIE: 2631
(+34.0%) (+20.5%) (+66.5%)

That's a lot more costly cross-DIE migrations. I think this patch is
along the right lines, but there's something fishy happening on this
box.

[0] - Fork task placement spread measurement:

cat /tmp/trace.$1 | grep -E "wakeup_new.*comm=hackbench" | \
sed -e 's/.*target_cpu=//' | sort | uniq -c | awk '{print $1}'