The scheduler tries to compute how many tasks a group of CPUs can handle by
assuming that a task's load is SCHED_LOAD_SCALE and a CPU's capacity is
SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE.
'struct sg_lb_stats:group_capacity_factor' divides the capacity of the group
by SCHED_LOAD_SCALE to estimate how many task can run in the group. Then, it
compares this value with the sum of nr_running to decide if the group is
overloaded or not.
But the 'group_capacity_factor' concept is hardly working for SMT systems, it
sometimes works for big cores but fails to do the right thing for little cores.
Below are two examples to illustrate the problem that this patch solves:
1- If the original capacity of a CPU is less than SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE
(640 as an example), a group of 3 CPUS will have a max capacity_factor of 2
(div_round_closest(3x640/1024) = 2) which means that it will be seen as
overloaded even if we have only one task per CPU.
2 - If the original capacity of a CPU is greater than SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE
(1512 as an example), a group of 4 CPUs will have a capacity_factor of 4
(at max and thanks to the fix [0] for SMT system that prevent the apparition
of ghost CPUs) but if one CPU is fully used by rt tasks (and its capacity is
reduced to nearly nothing), the capacity factor of the group will still be 4
(div_round_closest(3*1512/1024) = 5 which is cap to 4 with [0]).
So, this patch tries to solve this issue by removing capacity_factor and
replacing it with the 2 following metrics:
- The available CPU's capacity for CFS tasks which is already used by
load_balance().
- The usage of the CPU by the CFS tasks. For the latter, utilization_avg_contrib
has been re-introduced to compute the usage of a CPU by CFS tasks.
'group_capacity_factor' and 'group_has_free_capacity' has been removed and replaced
by 'group_no_capacity'. We compare the number of task with the number of CPUs and
we evaluate the level of utilization of the CPUs to define if a group is
overloaded or if a group has capacity to handle more tasks.
For SD_PREFER_SIBLING, a group is tagged overloaded if it has more than 1 task
so it will be selected in priority (among the overloaded groups). Since [1],
SD_PREFER_SIBLING is no more concerned by the computation of 'load_above_capacity'
because local is not overloaded.
[1] 9a5d9ba6a3 ("sched/fair: Allow calculate_imbalance() to move idle cpus")
Signed-off-by: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Morten.Rasmussen@arm.com
Cc: dietmar.eggemann@arm.com
Cc: efault@gmx.de
Cc: kamalesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Cc: linaro-kernel@lists.linaro.org
Cc: nicolas.pitre@linaro.org
Cc: preeti@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Cc: riel@redhat.com
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1425052454-25797-9-git-send-email-vincent.guittot@linaro.org
[ Tidied up the changelog. ]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>