Re: [PATCH] Revert "cpufreq: schedutil: Don't restrict kthread to related_cpus unnecessarily"

[Dietmar Eggemann]

On 05/08/2018 10:22 AM, Viresh Kumar wrote:
> On 08-05-18, 08:33, Dietmar Eggemann wrote:
> > This reverts commit e2cabe48c20efb174ce0c01190f8b9c5f3ea1d13.
> >
> > Lifting the restriction that the sugov kthread is bound to the
> > policy->related_cpus for a system with a slow switching cpufreq driver,
> > which is able to perform DVFS from any cpu (e.g. cpufreq-dt), is not
> > only not beneficial it also harms Enery-Aware Scheduling (EAS) on
> > systems with asymmetric cpu capacities (e.g. Arm big.LITTLE).
> >
> > The sugov kthread which does the update for the little cpus could
> > potentially run on a big cpu. It could prevent that the big cluster goes
> > into deeper idle states although all the tasks are running on the little
> > cluster.
>
> I think the original patch did the right thing, but that doesn't suit
> everybody as you explained.
>
> I wouldn't really revert the patch but fix my platform's cpufreq
> driver to set dvfs_possible_from_any_cpu = false, so that other
> platforms can still benefit from the original commit.

This would make sure that the kthreads are bound to the correct set of 
cpus for platforms with those cpufreq drivers (cpufreq-dt (h960), 
scmi-cpufreq, scpi-cpufreq) but it will also change the logic (e.g. 
sugov_should_update_freq() -> cpufreq_can_do_remote_dvfs()).

I'm still struggling to understand when a driver/platform should set 
dvfs_possible_from_any_cpu to true and what the actual benefit would be.