Re: [PATCH RFC v3 3/6] sched/idle: Add a generic poll before enter real idle path

[Quan Xu]

On 2017-11-17 19:36, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Nov 2017, Quan Xu wrote:
> > On 2017-11-16 17:53, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > That's just plain wrong. We don't want to see any of this PARAVIRT crap in
> > > anything outside the architecture/hypervisor interfacing code which really
> > > needs it.
> > >
> > > The problem can and must be solved at the generic level in the first place
> > > to gather the data which can be used to make such decisions.
> > >
> > > How that information is used might be either completely generic or requires
> > > system specific variants. But as long as we don't have any information at
> > > all we cannot discuss that.
> > >
> > > Please sit down and write up which data needs to be considered to make
> > > decisions about probabilistic polling. Then we need to compare and contrast
> > > that with the data which is necessary to make power/idle state decisions.
> > >
> > > I would be very surprised if this data would not overlap by at least 90%.
> > 1. which data needs to considerd to make decisions about probabilistic polling
> >
> > I really need to write up which data needs to considerd to make
> > decisions about probabilistic polling. At last several months,
> > I always focused on the data _from idle to reschedule_, then to bypass
> > the idle loops. unfortunately, this makes me touch scheduler/idle/nohz
> > code inevitably.
> >
> > with tglx's suggestion, the data which is necessary to make power/idle
> > state decisions, is the last idle state's residency time. IIUC this data
> > is duration from idle to wakeup, which maybe by reschedule irq or other irq.
> That's part of the picture, but not complete.

tglx, could you share more? I am very curious about it..

> > I also test that the reschedule irq overlap by more than 90% (trace the
> > need_resched status after cpuidle_idle_call), when I run ctxsw/netperf for
> > one minute.
> >
> > as the overlap, I think I can input the last idle state's residency time
> > to make decisions about probabilistic polling, as @dev->last_residency does.
> > it is much easier to get data.
> That's only true for your particular use case.
>
> > 2. do a HV specific idle driver (function)
> >
> > so far, power management is not exposed to guest.. idle is simple for KVM
> > guest,
> > calling "sti" / "hlt"(cpuidle_idle_call() --> default_idle_call())..
> > thanks Xen guys, who has implemented the paravirt framework. I can implement
> > it
> > as easy as following:
> >
> >               --- a/arch/x86/kernel/kvm.c
> Your email client is using a very strange formatting.

my bad, I insert space to highlight these code.

> This is definitely better than what you proposed so far and implementing it
> as a prove of concept seems to be worthwhile.
>
> But I doubt that this is the final solution. It's not generic and not
> necessarily suitable for all use case scenarios.
yes, I am exhausted :):)


could you tell me the gap to be generic and necessarily suitable for
all use case scenarios? as lack of irq/idle predictors?

 I really want to upstream it for all of public cloud users/providers..

as kvm host has a similar one, is it possible to upstream with following 
conditions? :
    1). add a QEMU configuration, whether enable or not, by default 
disable.
    2). add some "TODO" comments near the code.
    3). ...


anyway, thanks for your help..

Quan
 Alibaba Cloud