Re: 2.6.24-rc8-rt1: Strange latencies on mpc5200 powerpc - RCU issue?

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Wolfgang Grandegger wrote:
Steven Rostedt wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jul 2008, Wolfgang Grandegger wrote:
I continue this thread because it's still not understood why enabling
CONFIG_RCU_TRACE is necessary to get reasonable latencies on the
MPC5200. It might also explain, why I get much worse latencies with
2.6.25.8-rt7.

Have you tried turning on ftrace?

Not yet.


To recapitulate, with CONFIG_RCU_TRACE enabled, cyclictest reports max.
latencies of approx. 130 us with 2.6.24.4-rt4 on my MPC5200 PowerPC
board. If I disable it, the latency goes up to 600 us. Obviously, the
trace_mark() calls in rcupreempt*.c have some positive impact on the
latency. I narrowed down, that the 2 calls in __rcu_preempt_boost() in
rcupreempt-boost.c are the important one:

void __rcu_preempt_unboost(void)
{
    struct task_struct *curr = current;
    struct rcu_boost_dat *rbd;
    int prio;
    unsigned long flags;

    trace_mark(unboost_called, "NULL");

To make it clear: If I just comment out the line above and ...


    /* if not boosted, then ignore */
    if (likely(!rcu_is_boosted(curr)))
        return;

I wonder if the "likely" is faulty on the PPC code generation. Have you
tried removing that "likely" statement.

    /*
     * Need to be very careful with NMIs.
     * If we take the lock and an NMI comes in
     * and it may try to unboost us if curr->rcub_rbdp
     * is still set. So we zero it before grabbing the lock.
     * But this also means that we might be boosted again
     * so the boosting code needs to be aware of this.
     */
    rbd = curr->rcub_rbdp;
    curr->rcub_rbdp = NULL;

    /*
     * Now an NMI might have came in after we grab
     * the below lock. This check makes sure that
     * the NMI doesn't try grabbing the lock
     * while we already have it.
     */
    if (unlikely(!rbd))
        return;

Actually, remove all "likely" and "unlikely". The marker code could be
making it work better. But still, this shouldn't cause 600us latencies.

    spin_lock_irqsave(&rbd->rbs_lock, flags);
    /*
     * It is still possible that an NMI came in
     * between the "is_boosted" check and setting
     * the rcu_rbdp to NULL. This would mean that
     * the NMI already dequeued us.
     */
    if (unlikely(!rcu_is_boosted(curr)))
        goto out;

    list_del_init(&curr->rcub_entry);

    trace_mark(unboosted, "NULL");

.. this one as well, then the latency goes *up* to 600us. The first one has more influence, though.


    curr->rcu_prio = MAX_PRIO;

    spin_lock(&curr->pi_lock);
    prio = rt_mutex_getprio(curr);
    task_setprio(curr, prio);

    curr->rcub_rbdp = NULL;

    spin_unlock(&curr->pi_lock);
  out:
    spin_unlock_irqrestore(&rbd->rbs_lock, flags);
}

With them and all other trace_mark() calls commented out, the latency is
still OK. The first one has a bigger impact.

In 2.6.25.8-rt7, trace_mark() is not used any more but a function
incrementing the corresponding counter directly and I suspect that's the
reason why I'm seeing high latencies with both, CONFIG_RCU_TRACE enabled
and disabled.

I hope this observation sheds some light on the issue.

It is still a mystery to me. Maybe looking at the different assembly
outputs with the different configurations.

There seems to be something in trace_mark() keeping latency low:

  http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v2.6.24.4/include/linux/marker.h#L52

I will follow your suggestions.

I removed all "likely" and "unlikely" macros, but the latencies did not improve. Then I added

	preempt_disable();
	preempt_enable();

at the two locations mentioned above, like trace_mark() does, and disabled CONFIG_RCU_TRACE. That helped to keep the latencies low, and it did for 2.6.25.8-rt7 as well. As I see it, adding preemption points seem to prevent high latencies.

Wolfgang.



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