Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] sched: idle: IRQ based next prediction for idle period

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Sun, 10 Jan 2016, Daniel Lezcano wrote:

> On 01/06/2016 06:40 PM, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> > On Wed, 6 Jan 2016, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
> >
> > > Many IRQs are quiet most of the time, or they tend to come in bursts of
> > > fairly equal time intervals within each burst. It is therefore possible
> > > to detect those IRQs with stable intervals and guestimate when the next
> > > IRQ event is most likely to happen.
> > >
> > > Examples of such IRQs may include audio related IRQs where the FIFO size
> > > and/or DMA descriptor size with the sample rate create stable intervals,
> > > block devices during large data transfers, etc.  Even network streaming
> > > of multimedia content creates patterns of periodic network interface IRQs
> > > in some cases.
> > >
> > > This patch adds code to track the mean interval and variance for each IRQ
> > > over a window of time intervals between IRQ events. Those statistics can
> > > be used to assist cpuidle in selecting the most appropriate sleep state
> > > by predicting the most likely time for the next interrupt.
> > >
> > > Because the stats are gathered in interrupt context, the core computation
> > > is as light as possible.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
> > > +
> > > +		diff = ktime_sub(now, w->timestamp);
> > > +
> > > +		/*
> > > +		 * There is no point attempting predictions on interrupts more
> > > +		 * than 1 second apart. This has no benefit for sleep state
> > > +		 * selection and increases the risk of overflowing our
> > > variance
> > > +		 * computation. Reset all stats in that case.
> > > +		 */
> > > +		if (unlikely(ktime_after(diff, ktime_set(1, 0)))) {
> > > +			stats_reset(&w->stats);
> > > +			continue;
> > > +		}
> >
> > The above is wrong. It is not computing the interval between successive
> > interruts but rather the interval between the last interrupt occurrence
> > and the present time (i.e. when we're about to go idle).  This won't
> > prevent interrupt intervals greater than one second from being summed
> > and potentially overflowing the variance if this code is executed less
> > than a second after one such IRQ interval.  This test should rather be
> > performed in sched_idle_irq().
> 
> Hi Nico,
> 
> I have been through here again and think we should duplicate the test because
> there are two cases:
> 
> 1. We did not go idle and the interval measured in sched_idle_irq is more than
> one second, then the stats are reset. I suggest to use an approximation of one
> second: (diff < (1 << 20)) as we are in the fast
> path.
> 
> 2. We are going idle and the latest interrupt happened one second apart from
> now. So we keep the current test.

You don't need the current test if the interval is already limited 
earlier on.  Predictions that would otherwise trip that test will target 
a time in the past and be discarded.


Nicolas