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    Subject: [RFC PATCHSET] concurrency managed workqueue, take#2

    Hello, all.

    This is the second take of cmwq (concurrency managed workqueue). It's
    on top of linus#master 55639353a0035052d9ea6cfe4dde0ac7fcbb2c9f
    (v2.6.33-rc1). Git tree is available at

    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tj/wq.git review-cmwq

    Quilt series is available at

    http://master.kernel.org/~tj/patches/review-cmwq.tar.gz


    ISSUES FROM THE FIRST RFC AND THEIR RESOLUTIONS
    ===============================================

    The first RFC round[1] was in October. Several issues were raised but
    there was no objection against the basic design. Issued raised there
    and later are

    A. Hackish scheduler notification implemented by overriding scheduler
    class needs to be made generic.

    B. Scheduler local wake up function needs to be reimplemented and
    share code path with try_to_wake_up().

    C. Dual-colored workqueue flushing scheme may become a scalability
    issue.

    D. There are users which end up issuing too many concurrent works
    unless throttled somehow (xfs).

    E. Single thread workqueue is broken. Works queued to a single thread
    workqueue require strict ordering.

    F. The patch to actually implement cmwq is too large and needs to be
    split.

    A, B are scheduler related and will be discussed further later with
    other unresolved issues.

    C is solved by implementing multi colored flush. It has two
    properties which make it resistant to scalability issues. First, 14
    flushes can be in progress simultaneously. Second, when all the
    colors are used up, new flushers don't wait in line and get processed
    one by one. All the overflowed ones get assigned the same color and
    processed in batch when a color frees up, so throughput will increase
    along with congestion.

    D is solved by introducing max_active per cpu_workqueue_struct. If
    the number of active (running or pending for execution) works goes
    over the max, works are put on to delayed_works list; thus giving
    workqueues the ability to throttle concurrency. The original
    freeze/thaw implementation is replaced with max_active based one
    (max_active is temporarily quenched to zero while frozen), so the
    increase in the overall complexity isn't too great.

    E also is implemented using max_active. SINGLE_THREAD flag is
    replaced with SINGLE_CPU. CWQs dynamically arbitrate which CWQ is
    gonna serve SINGLE_CPU workqueue using atomic accesses to
    wq->single_cpu so that only one CWQ is active at any given time.
    Combined with max_active set to one, this results in the same queuing
    and execution behavior as single thread workqueues without requiring
    dedicated thread.

    F is solved by introducing workers, gcwqs, trustee, shared worklist
    and concurrency managed worker pool in separate steps. Although
    logics which are gradually added carry superfluous parts which will
    only be fully useful after complete implementation, each step achieves
    pretty good execution coverage of new logics and should be useful as
    review and bisection step.


    UN/HALF-RESOLVED ISSUES
    =======================

    A. After a couple of tries, scheduler notification is currently
    implemented as generalized version of preempt_notifiers which used
    to be used only by kvm. Two more notifications - wakeup and sleep
    - were added. Ingo was unsatisfied with the fact that there now
    are three different notification-like mechanisms living around the
    scheduler code and refused to accept the new notifiers unless all
    the scheduler notification mechanisms are unified.

    To prevent having cmwq patches floating too long without a stable
    branch to be tested in linux-next, it was agreed to do this in the
    following stages[2].

    1. Apply patches which don't change scheduler behavior but will
    reduce conflicts to sched tree.

    2. Create a new sched branch which will contain the new notifiers.
    This branch will be stable and will end up in linux-next but
    won't be pushed to Linus unless the notification mechanisms are
    unified.

    3. Base cmwq branch on top of the devel branch created in #2 and
    publish it to linux-next for testing.

    4. Unify scheduler notification mechanisms in the sched devel
    branch and when it's done push it and cmwq to Linus.

    B. set_cpus_allowed_ptr() doesn't move threads bound with
    kthread_bind() or to CPUs which don't have active set. Active
    state encloses online state and used by scheduler to prevent
    scheduling threads on a dying CPU unless strictly necessary.

    However, it's desirable to have PF_THREAD_BOUND for kworkers during
    usual operation and new and rescue workers need to be able to
    migrate to CPUs in CPU_DOWN_PREPARE state to guarantee forward
    progress to wq/work flushes from DOWN_PREPARE callbacks. Also, if
    a CPU comes back online, left running workers need to be rebound to
    the CPU ignoring PF_THREAD_BOUND restriction.

    Using kthread_bind() isn't feasible because kthread_bind() isn't
    synchronized against cpu online state and is allowed to put a
    thread on a dead cpu.

    Originally, force_cpus_allowed() was added which bypasses
    PF_THREAD_BOUND and active check. The current version adds
    __set_cpus_allowed() function which takes @force param to do about
    the same thing (new version properly checks online state so it will
    never put a task on a dead cpu). This is still temporary.

    I think the cleanest solution here would be making sure that nobody
    depends on kthread_bind() being able to put a task on a dead cpu
    and then allowing kthread_bind() to bind a task to cpus which are
    online by calling __set_cpus_allowed(). So, the interface visible
    outside will be set_cpus_allowed_ptr() for regular cases and
    kthread_bind() for kthreads. I'll be happy to pursue this path if
    it can be agreed on.

    C. While discussing issue B [3], Peter Zijlstra objected to the
    basic design of cmwq. Peter's objections are...

    o1. It isn't a generic worker pool mechanism in that it can't serve
    cpu-intensive workloads because all works are affined to local
    cpus.

    o2. Allowing long (> 5s for example) running works isn't a good
    idea and by not allowing long running works, the need to
    migrate back workers when cpu comes back online can be removed.

    o3. It's a fork-fest.

    My rationales for each are

    r1. The first design goal of cmwq is solving the issues the current
    workqueue implementation has including hard to detect
    deadlocks, unexpectedly long latencies caused by long running
    works which share the workqueue and excessive number of worker
    threads necessitated by each workqueue having its own workers.

    cmwq solves these issues quite efficiently without depending on
    fragile and complex heuristics. Concurrency is managed to
    minimal yet sufficient level, workers are reused as much as
    possible and only necessary number of workers are created and
    maintained.

    cmwq is cpu affine because its target workloads are not cpu
    intensive. Most works are context hungry not cpu cycle hungry
    and as such providing the necessary context (or concurrency)
    from the local CPU is the most efficient way to serve them.

    The second design goal is to unify different async mechanisms
    in kernel. Although cmwq wouldn't be able to serve CPU cycle
    intensive workload, most in-kernel async mechanisms are there
    to provide context and concurrency and they all can be
    converted to use cmwq.

    Async workloads which need to burn large amount of CPU cycles
    such as encryption and IO checksumming have pretty different
    requirements and worker pool designed to serve them would
    probably require fair amount of heuristics to determine the
    appropriate level of concurrency. Workqueue API may be
    extended to cover such workloads by providing an anonymous CPU
    for those works to bind to but the underlying operation would
    be fairly different. If this is something necessary, let's
    pursue it but I don't think it's exclusive with cmwq.

    r2. The only thing necessary to support long running works is the
    ability to rebind workers to the cpu if it comes back online
    and allowing long running works will allow most existing worker
    pools to be served by cmwq and also make CPU down/up latencies
    more predictable.

    r3. I don't think there is any way to implement shared worker pool
    without forking when more concurrency is required and the
    actual amount of forking would be low as cmwq scales the number
    of idle workers to keep according to the current concurrency
    level and uses rather long timeout (5min) for idlers.

    We know what to do about A. I'm pretty sure B can be solved one way
    or another. So, the biggest problem here is that whether the basic
    design of cmwq itself is agreed on. Being the author, I'm probably
    pretty biased but I really think it's a good solution for the problems
    it tries to solve and many other developers seem to agree on that
    according to the first RFC round. So, let's discuss. If I missed
    some points of the objection, please go ahead and add.


    CHANGES FROM THE LAST RFC TAKE[1] AND PREP PATCHSET[4]
    ======================================================

    * All scheduler related parts - notification, forced task migration
    and wake up from notification are re-done. This part is still in
    flux and likely to change further.

    * Barrier works are now uncolored. They don't participate in
    workqueue flushing and don't contribute to the active count. This
    change is necessary to enable max_active throttling.

    * max_active throttling is added and freezing is reimplemented using
    it. Fixed limit on total number of workers is removed. It's now
    regulated by max_active.

    * Singlethread workqueue is un-removed and works properly. It's
    implemented as SINGLE_CPU workqueue with max_active == 1.

    * The monster patch to implement cmwq is split into logical steps.

    This patchset contains the following 27 patches.

    0001-sched-rename-preempt_notifiers-to-sched_notifiers-an.patch
    0002-sched-refactor-try_to_wake_up.patch
    0003-sched-implement-__set_cpus_allowed.patch
    0004-sched-make-sched_notifiers-unconditional.patch
    0005-sched-add-wakeup-sleep-sched_notifiers-and-allow-NUL.patch
    0006-sched-implement-try_to_wake_up_local.patch
    0007-acpi-use-queue_work_on-instead-of-binding-workqueue-.patch
    0008-stop_machine-reimplement-without-using-workqueue.patch
    0009-workqueue-misc-cosmetic-updates.patch
    0010-workqueue-merge-feature-parameters-into-flags.patch
    0011-workqueue-define-both-bit-position-and-mask-for-work.patch
    0012-workqueue-separate-out-process_one_work.patch
    0013-workqueue-temporarily-disable-workqueue-tracing.patch
    0014-workqueue-kill-cpu_populated_map.patch
    0015-workqueue-update-cwq-alignement.patch
    0016-workqueue-reimplement-workqueue-flushing-using-color.patch
    0017-workqueue-introduce-worker.patch
    0018-workqueue-reimplement-work-flushing-using-linked-wor.patch
    0019-workqueue-implement-per-cwq-active-work-limit.patch
    0020-workqueue-reimplement-workqueue-freeze-using-max_act.patch
    0021-workqueue-introduce-global-cwq-and-unify-cwq-locks.patch
    0022-workqueue-implement-worker-states.patch
    0023-workqueue-reimplement-CPU-hotplugging-support-using-.patch
    0024-workqueue-make-single-thread-workqueue-shared-worker.patch
    0025-workqueue-use-shared-worklist-and-pool-all-workers-p.patch
    0026-workqueue-implement-concurrency-managed-dynamic-work.patch
    0027-workqueue-increase-max_active-of-keventd-and-kill-cu.patch

    0001-0006 are scheduler related changes.

    0007-0008 changes two unusual users. After the change, acpi creates
    per-cpu workers which weren't necessary before but in the end it won't
    be doing anything suboptimal. stop_machine won't use workqueue from
    this point on.

    0009-0013 do misc preparations. 0007-0013 stayed about the same from
    the previous round.

    0014 kills cpu_populated_map, creates workers for all possible workers
    and simplifies CPU hotplugging.

    0015-0024 introduces new constructs step by step and reimplements
    workqueue features so that they can be used with shared worker pool.

    0025 makes all workqueues share per-cpu worklist and pool their
    workers. At this stage, all the pieces other than concurrency managed
    worker pool is there.

    0026 implements concurrency managed worker pool. Even after this,
    there is no visible behavior different to workqueue users as all
    workqueues still have max_active of 1.

    0027 increases max_active of keventd. This patch isn't signed off
    yet. lockdep annotations need to be updated.

    Each feature of cmwq has been verified using test scenarios (well, I
    tried, at least). In a reply, I'll attach the source of the test
    module I used.

    Things to do from here are...

    * Hopefully, establish a stable tree.

    * Audit workqueue users, drop unnecessary workqueues and make them use
    keventd.

    * Restore workqueue tracing.

    * Replace various in-kernel async mechanisms which are there to
    provide context and concurrency.

    Diffstat follows.

    arch/ia64/kernel/smpboot.c | 2
    arch/ia64/kvm/Kconfig | 1
    arch/powerpc/kvm/Kconfig | 1
    arch/s390/kvm/Kconfig | 1
    arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c | 2
    arch/x86/kvm/Kconfig | 1
    drivers/acpi/osl.c | 41
    include/linux/kvm_host.h | 4
    include/linux/preempt.h | 48
    include/linux/sched.h | 71 +
    include/linux/stop_machine.h | 6
    include/linux/workqueue.h | 88 +
    init/Kconfig | 4
    init/main.c | 2
    kernel/power/process.c | 21
    kernel/sched.c | 329 +++--
    kernel/stop_machine.c | 151 ++
    kernel/trace/Kconfig | 4
    kernel/workqueue.c | 2640 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
    virt/kvm/kvm_main.c | 26
    20 files changed, 2783 insertions(+), 660 deletions(-)

    Thanks.

    --
    tejun

    [1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/896268
    [2] http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/63119/
    [3] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/921267
    [4] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/917570


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