Re: [PATCH] fs/buffer.c: disable per-CPU buffer_head cache for isolated CPUs

[Frederic Weisbecker]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 05:08:15PM -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> 
> For certain types of applications (for example PLC software or
> RAN processing), upon occurrence of an event, it is necessary to
> complete a certain task in a maximum amount of time (deadline).
> 
> One way to express this requirement is with a pair of numbers,
> deadline time and execution time, where:
> 
>         * deadline time: length of time between event and deadline.
>         * execution time: length of time it takes for processing of event
>                           to occur on a particular hardware platform
>                           (uninterrupted).
> 
> The particular values depend on use-case. For the case
> where the realtime application executes in a virtualized
> guest, an IPI which must be serviced in the host will cause
> the following sequence of events:
> 
>         1) VM-exit
>         2) execution of IPI (and function call)
>         3) VM-entry
> 
> Which causes an excess of 50us latency as observed by cyclictest
> (this violates the latency requirement of vRAN application with 1ms TTI,
> for example).
> 
> invalidate_bh_lrus calls an IPI on each CPU that has non empty
> per-CPU cache:
> 
>         on_each_cpu_cond(has_bh_in_lru, invalidate_bh_lru, NULL, 1);
> 
> The performance when using the per-CPU LRU cache is as follows:
> 
>  42 ns per __find_get_block
>  68 ns per __find_get_block_slow
> 
> Given that the main use cases for latency sensitive applications
> do not involve block I/O (data necessary for program operation is 
> locked in RAM), disable per-CPU buffer_head caches for isolated CPUs.

So what happens if they ever do I/O then? Like if they need to do
some prep work before entering an isolated critical section?

Thanks.

> 
> Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> diff --git a/fs/buffer.c b/fs/buffer.c
> index a7fc561758b1..49e9160ce100 100644
> --- a/fs/buffer.c
> +++ b/fs/buffer.c
> @@ -49,6 +49,7 @@
>  #include <trace/events/block.h>
>  #include <linux/fscrypt.h>
>  #include <linux/fsverity.h>
> +#include <linux/sched/isolation.h>
>  
>  #include "internal.h"
>  
> @@ -1289,7 +1290,7 @@ static void bh_lru_install(struct buffer_head *bh)
>  	 * failing page migration.
>  	 * Skip putting upcoming bh into bh_lru until migration is done.
>  	 */
> -	if (lru_cache_disabled()) {
> +	if (lru_cache_disabled() || cpu_is_isolated(smp_processor_id())) {
>  		bh_lru_unlock();
>  		return;
>  	}
> @@ -1319,6 +1320,10 @@ lookup_bh_lru(struct block_device *bdev, sector_t block, unsigned size)
>  
>  	check_irqs_on();
>  	bh_lru_lock();
> +	if (cpu_is_isolated(smp_processor_id())) {
> +		bh_lru_unlock();
> +		return NULL;
> +	}
>  	for (i = 0; i < BH_LRU_SIZE; i++) {
>  		struct buffer_head *bh = __this_cpu_read(bh_lrus.bhs[i]);
>  
>