[PATCH 0/5] replaced system_unbound_wq, added WQ_PERCPU to alloc_workqueue

From: Marco Crivellari
Date: Sat Nov 01 2025 - 12:31:56 EST


Hi,

=== Current situation: problems ===

Let's consider a nohz_full system with isolated CPUs: wq_unbound_cpumask is
set to the housekeeping CPUs, for !WQ_UNBOUND the local CPU is selected.

This leads to different scenarios if a work item is scheduled on an
isolated CPU where "delay" value is 0 or greater then 0:
schedule_delayed_work(, 0);

This will be handled by __queue_work() that will queue the work item on the
current local (isolated) CPU, while:

schedule_delayed_work(, 1);

Will move the timer on an housekeeping CPU, and schedule the work there.

Currently if a user enqueue a work item using schedule_delayed_work() the
used wq is "system_wq" (per-cpu wq) while queue_delayed_work() use
WORK_CPU_UNBOUND (used when a cpu is not specified). The same applies to
schedule_work() that is using system_wq and queue_work(), that makes use
again of WORK_CPU_UNBOUND.

This lack of consistency cannot be addressed without refactoring the API.

=== Recent changes to the WQ API ===

The following, address the recent changes in the Workqueue API:

- commit 128ea9f6ccfb ("workqueue: Add system_percpu_wq and system_dfl_wq")
- commit 930c2ea566af ("workqueue: Add new WQ_PERCPU flag")

The old workqueues will be removed in a future release cycle.

=== Introduced Changes by this series ===

1) [P 1] Replace uses of system_wq and system_unbound_wq

system_unbound_wq is to be used when locality is not required.

Because of that, system_unbound_wq has been replaced with
system_dfl_wq, to make sure it is the default choice when locality
is not important.

system_dfl_wq has the same behavior of the old system_unbound_wq.

2) [P 2-5] WQ_PERCPU added to alloc_workqueue()

This change adds a new WQ_PERCPU flag to explicitly request
alloc_workqueue() to be per-cpu when WQ_UNBOUND has not been specified.


Thanks!


Marco Crivellari (5):
RDMA/core: RDMA/mlx5: replace use of system_unbound_wq with
system_dfl_wq
RDMA/core: WQ_PERCPU added to alloc_workqueue users
hfi1: WQ_PERCPU added to alloc_workqueue users
RDMA/mlx4: WQ_PERCPU added to alloc_workqueue users
IB/rdmavt: WQ_PERCPU added to alloc_workqueue users

drivers/infiniband/core/cm.c | 2 +-
drivers/infiniband/core/device.c | 4 ++--
drivers/infiniband/core/ucma.c | 2 +-
drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1/init.c | 4 ++--
drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1/opfn.c | 4 ++--
drivers/infiniband/hw/mlx4/cm.c | 2 +-
drivers/infiniband/hw/mlx5/odp.c | 4 ++--
drivers/infiniband/sw/rdmavt/cq.c | 3 ++-
8 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

--
2.51.0