Re: [PATCH 0/3] cpufreq: Replace timers with utilization update callbacks

[Vincent Guittot]

On 1 March 2016 at 14:58, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 03:48:54PM +0100, Vincent Guittot wrote:
>
>> Another point to take into account is that the RT tasks will "steal"
>> the compute capacity that has been requested by the cfs tasks.
>>
>> Let takes the example of a CPU with 3 OPP on which run 2 rt tasks A
>> and B and 1 cfs task C.
>
>> Let assume that the real time constraint of RT task A is too agressive
>> for the lowest OPP0 and that the change of the frequency of the core
>> is too slow compare to this constraint but the real time constraint of
>> RT task B can be handle whatever the OPP. System don't have other
>> choice than setting the cpufreq min freq to OPP1 to be sure that
>> constraint of task A will be covered at anytime.
>
>> Then, we still have 2
>> possible OPPs. The CFS task asks for compute capacity that fits in
>> OPP1 but a part of this capacity will be stolen by RT tasks. If we
>> monitor the load of RT tasks and request capacity for these RT tasks
>> according to their current utilization, we can decide to switch to
>> highest OPP2 to ensure that task C will have enough remaining
>> capacity. A lot of embedded platform faces such kind of use cases
>
> Still doesn't make sense. How would you know the constraint of RT task
> A, and that it cannot be satisfied by OPP0 ? The only information you
> have in the task model is a static priority.

The kernel doesn't have this information so that's why the sysfs
cpufreq/scaling_min_freq has to be used to prevent the kernel (and
cpufreq in particular) to use OPP0.
>From a kernel/sched/cpufreq pov, we assume that all OPPs above
cpufreq/scaling_min can be used with RT tasks of the system. And
performance governor is used if only highest OPP can be used.

>
> The only possible choice the kernel has at this point is max OPP. It
> doesn't have enough (_any_) information about worst case execution of
> that task.
>