Pull 'full dynticks' support from Ingo Molnar:
"This tree from Frederic Weisbecker adds a new, (exciting! :-) core
kernel feature to the timer and scheduler subsystems: 'full dynticks',
or CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y.
This feature extends the nohz variable-size timer tick feature from
idle to busy CPUs (running at most one task) as well, potentially
reducing the number of timer interrupts significantly.
This feature got motivated by real-time folks and the -rt tree, but
the general utility and motivation of full-dynticks runs wider than
that:
- HPC workloads get faster: CPUs running a single task should be able
to utilize a maximum amount of CPU power. A periodic timer tick at
HZ=1000 can cause a constant overhead of up to 1.0%. This feature
removes that overhead - and speeds up the system by 0.5%-1.0% on
typical distro configs even on modern systems.
- Real-time workload latency reduction: CPUs running critical tasks
should experience as little jitter as possible. The last remaining
source of kernel-related jitter was the periodic timer tick.
- A single task executing on a CPU is a pretty common situation,
especially with an increasing number of cores/CPUs, so this feature
helps desktop and mobile workloads as well.
The cost of the feature is mainly related to increased timer
reprogramming overhead when a CPU switches its tick period, and thus
slightly longer to-idle and from-idle latency.
Configuration-wise a third mode of operation is added to the existing
two NOHZ kconfig modes:
- CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC: [formerly !CONFIG_NO_HZ], now explicitly named
as a config option. This is the traditional Linux periodic tick
design: there's a HZ tick going on all the time, regardless of
whether a CPU is idle or not.
- CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE: [formerly CONFIG_NO_HZ=y], this turns off the
periodic tick when a CPU enters idle mode.
- CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL: this new mode, in addition to turning off the
tick when a CPU is idle, also slows the tick down to 1 Hz (one
timer interrupt per second) when only a single task is running on a
CPU.
The .config behavior is compatible: existing !CONFIG_NO_HZ and
CONFIG_NO_HZ=y settings get translated to the new values, without the
user having to configure anything. CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL is turned off by
default.
This feature is based on a lot of infrastructure work that has been
steadily going upstream in the last 2-3 cycles: related RCU support
and non-periodic cputime support in particular is upstream already.
This tree adds the final pieces and activates the feature. The pull
request is marked RFC because:
- it's marked 64-bit only at the moment - the 32-bit support patch is
small but did not get ready in time.
- it has a number of fresh commits that came in after the merge
window. The overwhelming majority of commits are from before the
merge window, but still some aspects of the tree are fresh and so I
marked it RFC.
- it's a pretty wide-reaching feature with lots of effects - and
while the components have been in testing for some time, the full
combination is still not very widely used. That it's default-off
should reduce its regression abilities and obviously there are no
known regressions with CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y enabled either.
- the feature is not completely idempotent: there is no 100%
equivalent replacement for a periodic scheduler/timer tick. In
particular there's ongoing work to map out and reduce its effects
on scheduler load-balancing and statistics. This should not impact
correctness though, there are no known regressions related to this
feature at this point.
- it's a pretty ambitious feature that with time will likely be
enabled by most Linux distros, and we'd like you to make input on
its design/implementation, if you dislike some aspect we missed.
Without flaming us to crisp! :-)
Future plans:
- there's ongoing work to reduce 1Hz to 0Hz, to essentially shut off
the periodic tick altogether when there's a single busy task on a
CPU. We'd first like 1 Hz to be exposed more widely before we go
for the 0 Hz target though.
- once we reach 0 Hz we can remove the periodic tick assumption from
nr_running>=2 as well, by essentially interrupting busy tasks only
as frequently as the sched_latency constraints require us to do -
once every 4-40 msecs, depending on nr_running.
I am personally leaning towards biting the bullet and doing this in
v3.10, like the -rt tree this effort has been going on for too long -
but the final word is up to you as usual.
More technical details can be found in Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt"
* 'timers-nohz-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (39 commits)
sched: Keep at least 1 tick per second for active dynticks tasks
rcu: Fix full dynticks' dependency on wide RCU nocb mode
nohz: Protect smp_processor_id() in tick_nohz_task_switch()
nohz_full: Add documentation.
cputime_nsecs: use math64.h for nsec resolution conversion helpers
nohz: Select VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN from full dynticks config
nohz: Reduce overhead under high-freq idling patterns
nohz: Remove full dynticks' superfluous dependency on RCU tree
nohz: Fix unavailable tick_stop tracepoint in dynticks idle
nohz: Add basic tracing
nohz: Select wide RCU nocb for full dynticks
nohz: Disable the tick when irq resume in full dynticks CPU
nohz: Re-evaluate the tick for the new task after a context switch
nohz: Prepare to stop the tick on irq exit
nohz: Implement full dynticks kick
nohz: Re-evaluate the tick from the scheduler IPI
sched: New helper to prevent from stopping the tick in full dynticks
sched: Kick full dynticks CPU that have more than one task enqueued.
perf: New helper to prevent full dynticks CPUs from stopping tick
perf: Kick full dynticks CPU if events rotation is needed
...
Linus Torvalds