Re: [PATCH v3 6/9] cgroup/cpuset: Add a new isolated cpus.partition type

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 10:18:31AM -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
> Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=TBD
> 
> commit 994fb794cb252edd124a46ca0994e37a4726a100
> Author: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Date:   Sat, 19 Jun 2021 13:28:19 -0400
> 
>     cgroup/cpuset: Add a new isolated cpus.partition type
> 
>     Cpuset v1 uses the sched_load_balance control file to determine if load
>     balancing should be enabled.  Cpuset v2 gets rid of sched_load_balance
>     as its use may require disabling load balancing at cgroup root.
> 
>     For workloads that require very low latency like DPDK, the latency
>     jitters caused by periodic load balancing may exceed the desired
>     latency limit.
> 
>     When cpuset v2 is in use, the only way to avoid this latency cost is to
>     use the "isolcpus=" kernel boot option to isolate a set of CPUs. After
>     the kernel boot, however, there is no way to add or remove CPUs from
>     this isolated set. For workloads that are more dynamic in nature, that
>     means users have to provision enough CPUs for the worst case situation
>     resulting in excess idle CPUs.
> 
>     To address this issue for cpuset v2, a new cpuset.cpus.partition type
>     "isolated" is added which allows the creation of a cpuset partition
>     without load balancing. This will allow system administrators to
>     dynamically adjust the size of isolated partition to the current need
>     of the workload without rebooting the system.
> 
>     Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>

Nice! And while we are adding a new ABI, can we take advantage of that and
add a specific semantic that if a new isolated partition matches a subset of
"isolcpus=", it automatically maps to it. This means that any further
modification to that isolated partition will also modify the associated
isolcpus= subset.

Or to summarize, when we create a new isolated partition, remove the associated
CPUs from isolcpus= ?

Thanks.