Re: [PATCH RFC V8 0/17] Paravirtualized ticket spinlocks

From: Raghavendra K T
Date: Wed May 30 2012 - 07:27:15 EST


On 05/16/2012 08:49 AM, Raghavendra K T wrote:
On 05/14/2012 12:15 AM, Raghavendra K T wrote:
On 05/07/2012 08:22 PM, Avi Kivity wrote:

I could not come with pv-flush results (also Nikunj had clarified that
the result was on NOn PLE

I'd like to see those numbers, then.

Ingo, please hold on the kvm-specific patches, meanwhile.
[...]
To summarise,
with 32 vcpu guest with nr thread=32 we get around 27% improvement. In
very low/undercommitted systems we may see very small improvement or
small acceptable degradation ( which it deserves).


For large guests, current value SPIN_THRESHOLD, along with ple_window needed some of research/experiment.

[Thanks to Jeremy/Nikunj for inputs and help in result analysis ]

I started with debugfs spinlock/histograms, and ran experiments with 32, 64 vcpu guests for spin threshold of 2k, 4k, 8k, 16k, and 32k with
1vm/2vm/4vm for kernbench, sysbench, ebizzy, hackbench.
[ spinlock/histogram gives logarithmic view of lockwait times ]

machine: PLE machine with 32 cores.

Here is the result summary.
The summary includes 2 part,
(1) %improvement w.r.t 2K spin threshold,
(2) improvement w.r.t sum of histogram numbers in debugfs (that gives rough indication of contention/cpu time wasted)

For e.g 98% for 4k threshold kbench 1 vm would imply, there is a 98% reduction in sigma(histogram values) compared to 2k case

Result for 32 vcpu guest
==========================
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| Base-2k | 4k | 8k | 16k | 32k |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| kbench-1vm | 44 | 50 | 46 | 41 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 98 | 99 | 99 | 99 |
| kbench-2vm | 25 | 45 | 49 | 45 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 31 | 91 | 99 | 99 |
| kbench-4vm | -13 | -27 | -2 | -4 |
| SPINHisto-4vm | 29 | 66 | 95 | 99 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| ebizzy-1vm | 954 | 942 | 913 | 915 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 96 | 99 | 99 | 99 |
| ebizzy-2vm | 158 | 135 | 123 | 106 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 90 | 98 | 99 | 99 |
| ebizzy-4vm | -13 | -28 | -33 | -37 |
| SPINHisto-4vm | 83 | 98 | 99 | 99 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| hbench-1vm | 48 | 56 | 52 | 64 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 92 | 95 | 99 | 99 |
| hbench-2vm | 32 | 40 | 39 | 21 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 74 | 96 | 99 | 99 |
| hbench-4vm | 27 | 15 | 3 | -57 |
| SPINHisto-4vm | 68 | 88 | 94 | 97 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| sysbnch-1vm | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 76 | 98 | 99 | 99 |
| sysbnch-2vm | -1 | 3 | -1 | -4 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 82 | 94 | 96 | 99 |
| sysbnch-4vm | 0 | -2 | -8 | -14 |
| SPINHisto-4vm | 57 | 79 | 88 | 95 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+

result for 64 vcpu guest
=========================
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| Base-2k | 4k | 8k | 16k | 32k |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| kbench-1vm | 1 | -11 | -25 | 31 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 3 | 10 | 47 | 99 |
| kbench-2vm | 15 | -9 | -66 | -15 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 2 | 11 | 19 | 90 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| ebizzy-1vm | 784 | 1097 | 978 | 930 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 74 | 97 | 98 | 99 |
| ebizzy-2vm | 43 | 48 | 56 | 32 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 58 | 93 | 97 | 98 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| hbench-1vm | 8 | 55 | 56 | 62 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 18 | 69 | 96 | 99 |
| hbench-2vm | 13 | -14 | -75 | -29 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 57 | 74 | 80 | 97 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+
| sysbnch-1vm | 9 | 11 | 15 | 10 |
| SPINHisto-1vm | 80 | 93 | 98 | 99 |
| sysbnch-2vm | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| SPINHisto-2vm | 72 | 89 | 94 | 97 |
+----------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+

From this, value around 4k-8k threshold seem to be optimal one. [ This is amost inline with ple_window default ]
(lower the spin threshold, we would cover lesser % of spinlocks, that would result in more halt_exit/wakeups.

[ www.xen.org/files/xensummitboston08/LHP.pdf also has good graphical detail on covering spinlock waits ]

After 8k threshold, we see no more contention but that would mean we have wasted lot of cpu time in busy waits.

Will get a PLE machine again, and 'll continue experimenting with further tuning of SPIN_THRESHOLD.

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