Re: [PATCH RFC V5 0/3] kvm: Improving directed yield in PLE handler

[Marcelo Tosatti]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 07:07:17PM +0530, Raghavendra K T wrote:
> 
> Currently Pause Loop Exit (PLE) handler is doing directed yield to a
> random vcpu on pl-exit. We already have filtering while choosing
> the candidate to yield_to. This change adds more checks while choosing
> a candidate to yield_to.
> 
> On a large vcpu guests, there is a high probability of
> yielding to the same vcpu who had recently done a pause-loop exit. 
> Such a yield can lead to the vcpu spinning again.
> 
> The patchset keeps track of the pause loop exit and gives chance to a
> vcpu which has:
> 
>  (a) Not done pause loop exit at all (probably he is preempted lock-holder)
> 
>  (b) vcpu skipped in last iteration because it did pause loop exit, and
>  probably has become eligible now (next eligible lock holder)
> 
> This concept also helps in cpu relax interception cases which use same handler.
> 
> Changes since V4:
>  - Naming Change (Avi):
>   struct ple ==> struct spin_loop
>   cpu_relax_intercepted ==> in_spin_loop
>   vcpu_check_and_update_eligible ==> vcpu_eligible_for_directed_yield
>  - mark vcpu in spinloop as not eligible to avoid influence of previous exit
> 
> Changes since V3:
>  - arch specific fix/changes (Christian)
> 
> Changes since v2:
>  - Move ple structure to common code (Avi)
>  - rename pause_loop_exited to cpu_relax_intercepted (Avi)
>  - add config HAVE_KVM_CPU_RELAX_INTERCEPT (Avi)
>  - Drop superfluous curly braces (Ingo)
> 
> Changes since v1:
>  - Add more documentation for structure and algorithm and Rename
>    plo ==> ple (Rik).
>  - change dy_eligible initial value to false. (otherwise very first directed
>     yield will not be skipped. (Nikunj)
>  - fixup signoff/from issue
> 
> Future enhancements:
>   (1) Currently we have a boolean to decide on eligibility of vcpu. It
>     would be nice if I get feedback on guest (>32 vcpu) whether we can
>     improve better with integer counter. (with counter = say f(log n )).
>   
>   (2) We have not considered system load during iteration of vcpu. With
>    that information we can limit the scan and also decide whether schedule()
>    is better. [ I am able to use #kicked vcpus to decide on this But may
>    be there are better ideas like information from global loadavg.]
> 
>   (3) We can exploit this further with PV patches since it also knows about
>    next eligible lock-holder.
> 
> Summary: There is a very good improvement for kvm based guest on PLE machine.
> The V5 has huge improvement for kbench.
> 
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
>    base_rik    stdev       patched      stdev       %improve
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
>               kernbench (time in sec lesser is better)
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
>  1x    49.2300     1.0171    22.6842     0.3073    117.0233 %
>  2x    91.9358     1.7768    53.9608     1.0154    70.37516 %
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
> 
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
>               ebizzy (records/sec more is better)
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
>  1x  1129.2500    28.6793    2125.6250    32.8239    88.23334 %
>  2x  1892.3750    75.1112    2377.1250   181.6822    25.61596 %
> +-----------+-----------+-----------+------------+-----------+
> 
> Note: The patches are tested on x86.
> 
>  Links
>   V4: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/16/80
>   V3: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/12/437
>   V2: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/10/392
>   V1: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/9/32
> 
>  Raghavendra K T (3):
>    config: Add config to support ple or cpu relax optimzation 
>    kvm : Note down when cpu relax intercepted or pause loop exited 
>    kvm : Choose a better candidate for directed yield 
> ---
>  arch/s390/kvm/Kconfig    |    1 +
>  arch/x86/kvm/Kconfig     |    1 +
>  include/linux/kvm_host.h |   39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  virt/kvm/Kconfig         |    3 +++
>  virt/kvm/kvm_main.c      |   41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  5 files changed, 85 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

Reviewed-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@xxxxxxxxxx>

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