Re: [PATCH 0/4] sched: Add CPU rate caps

From: Peter Williams
Date: Mon Jun 19 2006 - 19:58:37 EST


Andrew Morton wrote:

If the task can exceed its cap without impacting any other tasks (ie: there
is spare idle capacity), what happens? I trust that spare capacity gets
used?

As I said in another reply, the answer to this is yes for soft caps and how good a job was demonstrated by the kernbench results that I included. Repeated here:

Average Optimal -j 8 Load Run:

Vanilla Patch Applied Soft Cap 0%

Elapsed Time 1056.1 (1.92) 1048.2 (0.62) 1064.1 (1.59)
User Time 1908.1 (1.09) 1895.2 (1.30) 1926.6 (1.39)
System Time 181.7 (0.60) 177.5 (0.74) 173.8 (1.07)
Total 2089.8 2072.7 2100.4
Percent CPU 197.6 (0.55) 197.0 (0) 197.0 (0)
Context Switches 49253.6 (136.31) 48881.4 (92.03) 92490.8 (163.71)
Sleeps 28038.8 (228.11) 28136.0 (250.65) 25769.4 (280.40)

Note that the (slight) increase in the elapsed time when using a soft cap of zero can be directly attributed to the increase in CPU usage due to the cap overhead (an approximate increase of 16 seconds for elapsed time with an approximate increase of 28 seconds (for two CPUs) in CPU time consumed when comparing the "patch applied" and "soft cap 0%" numbers).

I think this illustrates that (for soft caps) spare capacity is not wasted?

> (Is this termed "work conserving"?)

I don't know but it sounds apt.

Peter
PS For ordinary users, I think that the ability to run jobs in the background by using a soft cap of zero is the most useful thing that this patch provides.
--
Peter Williams pwil3058@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious."
-- Ambrose Bierce
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