Re: Possible bug from kernel 2.6.22 and above, 2.6.24-rc4

From: Jie Chen
Date: Wed Dec 05 2007 - 15:23:22 EST


Ingo Molnar wrote:
* Jie Chen <chen@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Since I am using affinity flag to bind each thread to a different core, the synchronization overhead should increases as the number of cores/threads increases. But what we observed in the new kernel is the opposite. The barrier overhead of two threads is 8.93 micro seconds vs 1.86 microseconds for 8 threads (the old kernel is 0.49 vs 1.86). This will confuse most of people who study the synchronization/communication scalability. I know my test code is not real-world computation which usually use up all cores. I hope I have explained myself clearly. Thank you very much.

btw., could you try to not use the affinity mask and let the scheduler manage the spreading of tasks? It generally has a better knowledge about how tasks interrelate.

Ingo
Hi, Ingo:

I just disabled the affinity mask and reran the test. There were no significant changes for two threads (barrier overhead is around 9 microseconds). As for 8 threads, the barrier overhead actually drops a little, which is good. Let me know whether I can be any help. Thank you very much.

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Jie Chen
Scientific Computing Group
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
12000, Jefferson Ave.
Newport News, VA 23606

(757)269-5046 (office) (757)269-6248 (fax)
chen@xxxxxxxx
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