Re: [RFC PATCH 0/9] Introduce housekeeping subsystem

[Christopher Lameter]

On Fri, 11 Aug 2017, Chris Metcalf wrote:

> > > Maybe a CONFIG_HOUSEKEEPING_BOOT_ONLY as a way to restrict housekeeping
> > > by default to just the boot cpu.  In conjunction with NOHZ_FULL_ALL you
> > > would
> > > then get the expected semantics.
> > A big box with only the boot cpu for housekeeping is likely screwed.
>
> Fair point - this kind of configuration would be primarily useful for
> dedicated systems that were running a high-traffic-rate networking
> application on many cores, for example.  In this mode you don't end up
> putting a lot of burden on the housekeeping core.  In any case,
> probably not worth adding an additional kernel config for.

The standard server config at this point is a two NUMA node with lots of
cores on each. For such a thing a single housekeeping cpu is usually
sufficient. Having a rather large number of NUMA nodes is unusual.

The question is also what is considered a "large" system at this point?
Lots of cores? Lots of NUMA nodes?

Ah, Chris since you are here: What is happening with the dataplane
patches?