On 28/04/20 06:02, Scott Wood wrote: > These patches mitigate latency caused by newidle_balance() on large > systems, by enabling interrupts when the lock is dropped, and exiting > early at various points if an RT task is runnable on the current CPU. > > When applied to an RT kernel on a 72-core machine (2 threads per core), I > saw significant reductions in latency as reported by rteval -- from > over 500us to around 160us with hyperthreading disabled, and from > over 1400us to around 380us with hyperthreading enabled. > > This isn't the first time something like this has been tried: > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20121222003019.433916240@xxxxxxxxxxx/ > That attempt ended up being reverted: > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/5122CD9C.9070702@xxxxxxxxxx/ > > The problem in that case was the failure to keep BH disabled, and the > difficulty of fixing that when called from the post_schedule() hook. > This patchset uses finish_task_switch() to call newidle_balance(), which > enters in non-atomic context so we have full control over what we disable > and when. > > There was a note at the end about wanting further discussion on the matter -- > does anyone remember if that ever happened and what the conclusion was? > Are there any other issues with enabling interrupts here and/or moving > the newidle_balance() call? > Random thought that just occurred to me; in the grand scheme of things, with something in the same spirit as task-stealing (i.e. don't bother with a full fledged balance at newidle, just pick one spare task somewhere), none of this would be required. Sadly I don't think anyone has been looking at it any recently.
