Messages in this thread | | | From | Gilad Ben-Yossef <> | Subject | [PATCH v5 0/8] Reduce cross CPU IPI interference | Date | Mon, 2 Jan 2012 12:24:11 +0200 |
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We have lots of infrastructure in place to partition a multi-core systems such that we have a group of CPUs that are dedicated to specific task: cgroups, scheduler and interrupt affinity and cpuisol boot parameter. Still, kernel code will some time interrupt all CPUs in the system via IPIs for various needs. These IPIs are useful and cannot be avoided altogether, but in certain cases it is possible to interrupt only specific CPUs that have useful work to do and not the entire system.
This patch set, inspired by discussions with Peter Zijlstra and Frederic Weisbecker when testing the nohz task patch set, is a first stab at trying to explore doing this by locating the places where such global IPI calls are being made and turning a global IPI into an IPI for a specific group of CPUs. The purpose of the patch set is to get feedback if this is the right way to go for dealing with this issue and indeed, if the issue is even worth dealing with at all. Based on the feedback from this patch set I plan to offer further patches that address similar issue in other code paths.
The patch creates an on_each_cpu_mask infrastructure API (derived from existing arch specific versions in Tile and Arm) and service wrappers and uses them to turn several global IPI invocation to per CPU group invocations.
This 5th iteration includes the following changes:
- Abstract away the common boilerplate as on_each_cpu_cond wrapper function and make all the places use it. - Move the page_alloc.c/drain_all_pages to use a static global cpumask to avoid adding an allocation in the direct reclaim path, based on feedback and suggestion by Mel Gorman and Chris Metcalf. - Add an optional patch to add vmstat counters to per-cpu page drain request and the upside to using this patch, based on Mel Gorman idea. - Provide the same treatment to yet another call site - this time the local LRU BH invalidation.
The patch was compiled for arm and boot tested on x86 in UP, SMP, with and without CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK and was further tested by running hackbench on x86 in SMP mode in a 4 CPUs VM with no obvious regressions.
I also artificially exercised SLUB flush_all via the debug interface and observed the difference in IPI count across processors with and without the patch - from an IPI on all processors but one without the patch to a subset (and often no IPI at all) with the patch.
I further used fault injection framework to force cpumask alloction failures for CPUMASK_OFFSTACK=y cases and triggering the code using slub sys debug interface, as well as running ./hackbench 400 for page_alloc, with no obvious falilures.
Gilad Ben-Yossef (8): smp: Introduce a generic on_each_cpu_mask function arm: Move arm over to generic on_each_cpu_mask tile: Move tile to use generic on_each_cpu_mask smp: Add func to IPI cpus based on parameter func slub: Only IPI CPUs that have per cpu obj to flush fs: only send IPI to invalidate LRU BH when needed mm: Only IPI CPUs to drain local pages if they exist mm: add vmstat counters for tracking PCP drains
arch/arm/kernel/smp_tlb.c | 20 ++++------------- arch/tile/include/asm/smp.h | 7 ------ arch/tile/kernel/smp.c | 19 ---------------- fs/buffer.c | 15 ++++++++++++- include/linux/smp.h | 32 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ include/linux/vm_event_item.h | 1 + kernel/smp.c | 47 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ mm/page_alloc.c | 30 +++++++++++++++++++++++++- mm/slub.c | 10 +++++++- mm/vmstat.c | 2 + 10 files changed, 139 insertions(+), 44 deletions(-)
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