Re: Inquiry: Should we remove "isolcpus= kernel boot option? (mayhave realtime uses)

[Mark Hounschell]

Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 12:26 -0700, Max Krasnyansky wrote:
> > Mark Hounschell wrote:
> > > IMHO,
> > >
> > > What is an abonination, is that cpusets are equired for this type of
> > > isolation to begin with, even on a 2 processor machine.
> > >
> > > I would like the option to stay and be extended like Max originally
> > > proposed. If cpusets/hotplug are configured isolation would be obtained
> > > using them. If not then isolcpus could be used to get the same isolation.
> > >
> > > From a user land point of view, I just want an easy way to fully isolate
> > > a particular cpu. Even a new syscall or extension to sched_setaffinity
> > > would make me happy. Cpusets and hotplug don't.
> > >
> > > Again this is just MHO.
> > Mark, I used to be the same way and I'm a convert now. It does seems like an
> > overkill for 2cpu machine to have cpusets and cpu hotplug. But both options
> > cost around 50KB worth of text and maybe another 10KB of data. That's on the
> > x86-64 box. Let's say it's a 100KB. Not a terribly huge overhead.
> >
> > Now if you think about it. In order to be able to dynamically isolate a cpu we
> > have to do exact same thing that CPU hotplug does. Which is to clear all
> > timers, kernel, threads, etc from that CPUs. It does not make sense to
> > implement a separate logic for that. You could argue that you do not need
> > dynamic isolation but it's too inflexible in general even on 2way machines
> > it's waste to not be able to use second cpu for general load even when RT app
> > is not running. Given that CPU hotplug is necessary for many things, including
> > suspend on multi-cpu machines it's practically guaranteed to be very stable
> > and well supported. In other words we have a perfect synergy here :).
> >
> > Now, about the cpusets. You do not really have to do anything fancy with them.
> > If all you want to do is to disable systemwide load balancing
> > 	mount -tcgroup -o cpuset cpuset /dev/cpuset
> > 	echo 0 > /dev/cpuset/cpuset.sched_load_banace
> >
> > That's it. You get _exactly_ the same effect as with isolcpus=. And you can
> > change that dynamically, and when you switch to quad- and eight- core machines
> >  then you'll be to do that with groups of cpus, not just system wide.
> >
> > Just to complete the example above. Lets say you want to isolate cpu2
> > (assuming that cpusets are already mounted).
> > 	
> > 	# Bring cpu2 offline
> > 	echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
> >
> > 	# Disable system wide load balancing
> > 	echo 0 > /dev/cpuset/cpuset.sched_load_banace
> > 	
> > 	# Bring cpu2 online
> > 	echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu2/online
> >
> > Now if you want to un-isolate cpu2 you do
> > 	
> > 	# Disable system wide load balancing
> > 	echo 1 > /dev/cpuset/cpuset.sched_load_banace
> > 	
> > Of course this is not a complete isolation. There are also irqs (see my
> > "default irq affinity" patch), workqueues and the stop machine. I'm working on
> > those too and will release .25 base cpuisol tree when I'm done.

Thanks for the detailed tutorial Max. I'm personally still very 
skeptical. I really don't believe you'll ever be able to run multiple
_demanding_ RT environments on the same machine. Now matter how many 
processors you've got. But even though I might be wrong there, thats 
actually OK with me. I, and I'm sure most, don't have a problem with 
dedicating a machine to a single RT env.

You've got to hold your tongue just right, look at the right spot on the 
wall, and be running the RT patched kernel, all at the same time, to run 
just one successfully. I just want to stop using my tongue and staring 
at the wall. I personally feel that a single easy method of completely 
isolating a single processor from the rest of the machine _might_ 
benefit the RT community more than all this fancy stuff coming down the 
pipe. Something like your original proposed isolcpus or even a simple 
SCHED_ISOLATE arg to the setschedular call.

> Furthermore, cpusets allow for isolated but load-balanced RT domains. We
> now have a reasonably strong RT balancer, and I'm looking at
> implementing a full partitioned EDF scheduler somewhere in the future.
>
> This could never be done using isolcpus.


I'm sure my thoughts reflect a gross under estimate of what really has 
to happen. I will hope for the best and wait.

Regards
Mark


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