Hi Pankaj Gupta, Thanks for your reply. I have found the problem after debug Linux Kernel. The problem is once there is I/O thread upon vCPU2 thread of VM1, there will be some mutex (synchronization) produced so that it will be preempted by vCPU2 thread of VM2. After I set "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_wakeup_granularity_ns" to be the default value (3 milliseconds), the timeslice is stable again even though there is I/O thread upon vCPU2 thread of VM1. That means, vCPU2 thread of VM2 can not preempt vCPU2 thread of VM1 because "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_wakeup_granularity_ns" is 3 milliseconds. Thank you again :) Best Regards, Harry On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 3:07 AM, Pankaj Gupta <pagupta@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hello, > >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> I am testing the timeslice of vCPU thread in QEMU/KVM. In principle, >> the timeslice should be stable under following workload but it is >> unstable after I do experiments with following workload. I appreciate >> it if you can give me some suggestions. Thanks in advance. >> >> Workload settings: >> In VMM, there are 6 pCPUs which are pCPU0, pCPU1, pCPU2, pCPU3, pCPU4, >> pCPU5. There are two Kernel Virtual Machines (VM1 and VM2) upon VMM. >> In each VM, there are 5 vritual CPUs (vCPU0, vCPU1, vCPU2, vCPU3, >> vCPU4). vCPU0 in VM1 and vCPU0 in VM2 are pinned to pCPU0 and pCPU5 >> separately to handle interrupts dedicatedly. vCPU1 in VM1 and vCPU1 in >> VM2 are pinned to pCPU1; vCPU2 in VM1 and vCPU2 in VM2 are pinned to >> pCPU2; vCPU3 in VM1 and vCPU3 in VM2 are pinned to pCPU3; vCPU4 in VM1 >> and vCPU4 in VM2 are pinned to pCPU4. There is one CPU intensive >> thread (while(1){i++}) upon each vCPU in VM1 and VM2 to avoid the vCPU >> to be idle. In VM1, I start one I/O thread on vCPU2, which the I/O >> thread reads 4KB from disk each time (reads 8GB in total). The I/O >> scheduler in VM1 and VM2 is Noop. The I/O scheduler in VMM is CFQ. >> "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_min_granularity_ns" is set to be 100 >> microseconds in VM1 and VM2. "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_latency_ns" is >> set to be 100 microseconds in VM1 and VM2. >> "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_wakeup_granularity_ns" is set to be 0 >> microseconds in VM1 and VM2. >> "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_min_granularity_ns" is set to be 2.25 >> milliseconds in VMM. "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_latency_ns" is set to be >> 18 milliseconds in VMM. "/proc/sys/kernel/sched_wakeup_granularity_ns" >> is set to be 0 microseconds in VMM. I also pinned the I/O worker >> threads started by QEMU to pCPU5. The process scheduling class I use >> is CFS. >> >> Linux Kernel version for VMM is: 3.16.39 >> Linux Kernel version for VM1 and VM2 is: 4.7.4 >> QEMU emulator version is: 2.0.0 >> >> I test the timeslice of vCPU2 thread of VM1 in VMM according to above >> workload settings and the experiment shows that the timeslice is not >> stable. I also find that after the I/O thread on vCPU2 in VM1 is >> finished, the timeslice of vCPU2 thread of VM1 will be stable. From >> the experiment, it seems that the unstable timeslice of vCPU2 thread >> of VM1 is caused by the I/O thread on it in VM1. However, I think the >> I/O thread on vCPU2 in VM1 should not affect its timeslice since each >> vCPU in VM1 and VM2 has one CPU intensive thread (while(1){i++}). >> Please give me some suggestions if you have. Thank you. > > I think you need to check what else is scheduling on pCPU2(physical cpu). > If you want to avoid any other task to be scheduled at pCPU2, you need > to isolate the pCPU2 core to avoid scheduler to run any other task on it. > >> >> Best, >> Harry >> -- >> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in >> the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html >> -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html