Re: [PATCH RFC 0/2] kvm: Improving undercommit,overcommit scenariosin PLE handler

[Raghavendra K T]

On 09/24/2012 02:12 PM, Dor Laor wrote:
> In order to help PLE and pvticketlock converge I thought that a small
> test code should be developed to test this in a predictable,
> deterministic way.
>
> The idea is to have a guest kernel module that spawn a new thread each
> time you write to a /sys/.... entry.
>
> Each such a thread spins over a spin lock. The specific spin lock is
> also chosen by the /sys/ interface. Let's say we have an array of spin
> locks *10 times the amount of vcpus.
>
> All the threads are running a
> while (1) {
>
> spin_lock(my_lock);
> sum += execute_dummy_cpu_computation(time);
> spin_unlock(my_lock);
>
> if (sys_tells_thread_to_die()) break;
> }
>
> print_result(sum);
>
> Instead of calling the kernel's spin_lock functions, clone them and make
> the ticket lock order deterministic and known (like a linear walk of all
> the threads trying to catch that lock).

By Cloning you mean hierarchy of the locks?
Also I believe time should be passed via sysfs / hardcoded for each
type of lock we are mimicking

> This way you can easy calculate:
> 1. the score of a single vcpu running a single thread
> 2. the score of sum of all thread scores when #thread==#vcpu all
> taking the same spin lock. The overall sum should be close as
> possible to #1.
> 3. Like #2 but #threads > #vcpus and other versions of #total vcpus
> (belonging to all VMs) > #pcpus.
> 4. Create #thread == #vcpus but let each thread have it's own spin
> lock
> 5. Like 4 + 2
>
> Hopefully this way will allows you to judge and evaluate the exact
> overhead of scheduling VMs and threads since you have the ideal result
> in hand and you know what the threads are doing.
>
> My 2 cents, Dor

Thank you,
I think this is an excellent idea. ( Though I am trying to put all the
pieces together you mentioned). So overall we should be able to measure
the performance of pvspinlock/PLE improvements with a deterministic
load in guest.

Only thing I am missing is,
How to generate different combinations of the lock.

Okay, let me see if I can come with a solid model for this.

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