[PATCH 3/3] cpufreq: CPPC: Eliminate the impact of cpc_read() latency error

From: Zeng Heng
Date: Wed Oct 25 2023 - 05:33:53 EST


We have found significant differences in the latency of cpc_read() between
regular scenarios and scenarios with high memory access pressure. Ignoring
this error can result in getting rate interface occasionally returning
absurd values.

Here provides a high memory access sample test by stress-ng. My local
testing platform includes 160 CPUs, the CPC registers is accessed by mmio
method, and the cpuidle feature is disabled (the AMU always works online):

~~~
./stress-ng --memrate 160 --timeout 180
~~~

The following data is sourced from ftrace statistics towards
cppc_get_perf_ctrs():

Regular scenarios || High memory access pressure scenarios
104) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() { || 133) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() {
104) 0.800 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 4.580 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.640 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 7.780 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.450 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 2.550 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.430 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 0.570 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 4.610 us | } || 133) ! 157.610 us | }
104) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() { || 133) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() {
104) 0.720 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 0.760 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.720 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 4.480 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.510 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) 0.520 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 0.500 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 133) + 10.100 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
104) 3.460 us | } || 133) ! 120.850 us | }
108) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() { || 87) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() {
108) 0.820 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) ! 255.200 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.850 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 2.910 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.590 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 5.160 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.610 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 4.340 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 5.080 us | } || 87) ! 315.790 us | }
108) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() { || 87) | cppc_get_perf_ctrs() {
108) 0.630 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 0.800 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.630 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 6.310 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.420 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) 1.190 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 0.430 us | cpc_read.isra.0(); || 87) + 11.620 us | cpc_read.isra.0();
108) 3.780 us | } || 87) ! 207.010 us | }

My local testing platform works under 3000000hz, but the cpuinfo_cur_freq
interface returns values that are not even close to the actual frequency:

[root@localhost ~]# cd /sys/devices/system/cpu
[root@localhost cpu]# for i in {0..159}; do cat cpu$i/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq; done
5127812
2952127
3069001
3496183
922989768
2419194
3427042
2331869
3594611
8238499
...

The reason is when under heavy memory access pressure, the execution of
cpc_read() delay has increased from sub-microsecond to several hundred
microseconds. Moving the cpc_read function into a critical section by irq
disable/enable has minimal impact on the result.

cppc_get_perf_ctrs()[0] cppc_get_perf_ctrs()[1]
/ \ / \
cpc_read cpc_read cpc_read cpc_read
ref[0] delivered[0] ref[1] delivered[1]
| | | |
v v v v
-----------------------------------------------------------------------> time
<--delta[0]--> <------sample_period------> <-----delta[1]----->

Since that,
freq = ref_freq * (delivered[1] - delivered[0]) / (ref[1] - ref[0])
and
delivered[1] - delivered[0] = freq * (delta[1] + sample_period),
ref[1] - ref[0] = ref_freq * (delta[0] + sample_period)

To eliminate the impact of system memory access latency, setting a
sampling period of 2us is far from sufficient. Consequently, we suggest
cppc_cpufreq_get_rate() only can be called in the process context, and
adopt a longer sampling period to neutralize the impact of random latency.

Here we call the cond_resched() function instead of sleep-like functions
to ensure that `taskset -c $i cat cpu$i/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq` could
work when cpuidle feature is enabled.

Reported-by: Yang Shi <yang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230328193846.8757-1-yang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Signed-off-by: Zeng Heng <zengheng4@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/cpufreq/cppc_cpufreq.c | 16 +++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/cpufreq/cppc_cpufreq.c b/drivers/cpufreq/cppc_cpufreq.c
index 321a9dc9484d..a7c5418bcda7 100644
--- a/drivers/cpufreq/cppc_cpufreq.c
+++ b/drivers/cpufreq/cppc_cpufreq.c
@@ -851,12 +851,26 @@ static int cppc_get_perf_ctrs_pair(void *val)
struct fb_ctr_pair *fb_ctrs = val;
int cpu = fb_ctrs->cpu;
int ret;
+ unsigned long timeout;

ret = cppc_get_perf_ctrs(cpu, &fb_ctrs->fb_ctrs_t0);
if (ret)
return ret;

- udelay(2); /* 2usec delay between sampling */
+ if (likely(!irqs_disabled())) {
+ /*
+ * Set 1ms as sampling interval, but never schedule
+ * to the idle task to prevent the AMU counters from
+ * stopping working.
+ */
+ timeout = jiffies + msecs_to_jiffies(1);
+ while (!time_after(jiffies, timeout))
+ cond_resched();
+
+ } else {
+ pr_warn_once("CPU%d: Get rate in atomic context", cpu);
+ udelay(2); /* 2usec delay between sampling */
+ }

return cppc_get_perf_ctrs(cpu, &fb_ctrs->fb_ctrs_t1);
}
--
2.25.1