lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2003]   [Mar]   [6]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
From
SubjectRe: HT and idle = poll
Date
In article <200303052318.04647.habanero@us.ibm.com>,
Andrew Theurer <habanero@us.ibm.com> wrote:
>The test: kernbench (average of kernel compiles5) with -j2 on a 2 physical/4
>logical P4 system. This is on 2.5.64-HTschedB3:
>
>idle != poll: Elapsed: 136.692s User: 249.846s System: 30.596s CPU: 204.8%
>idle = poll: Elapsed: 161.868s User: 295.738s System: 32.966s CPU: 202.6%
>
>A 15.5% increase in compile times.
>
>So, don't use idle=poll with HT when you know your workload has idle time! I
>have not tried oprofile, but it stands to reason that this would be a
>problem. There's no point in using idle=poll with oprofile and HT anyway, as
>the cpu utilization is totally wrong with HT to begin with (more on that
>later).
>
>Presumably a logical cpu polling while idle uses too many cpu resources
>unnecessarily and significantly affects the performance of its sibling.

Btw, I think this is exactly what the new HT prescott instructions are
for: instead of having busy loops polling for a change in memory (be it
a spinlock or a "need_resched" flag), new HT CPU's will support a
"mwait" instruction.

But yes, at least for now, I really don't think you should really _ever_
use "idle=poll" on HT-enabled hardware. The idle CPU's will just suck
cycles from the real work.

Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:33    [W:0.056 / U:0.160 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site