Re: [PATCH v2] sched: reduce contention on tg's load_avg & runnable_avg

From: Waiman Long
Date: Wed Jan 22 2014 - 12:14:22 EST


On 01/16/2014 01:21 PM, bsegall@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Waiman Long<Waiman.Long@xxxxxx> writes:

It was found that with a perf profile of a compute workload (at 1500
users) of the AIM7 benchmark running on a glueless 4-socket 40-core
Westmere-EX system (HT on) on a 3.13-rc8 kernel that the scheduling
tick related functions account for quite a significant portion of
the total kernel cpu cycles.

0.62% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_cfs_rq_blocked_load
0.47% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] entity_tick
0.10% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_cfs_shares
0.03% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_curr

The scheduling tick functions account for about 1.22% of the total
CPU cycles. Of the top 2 function in the above list, the reading
and writing of the tg->load_avg variable account for over 90% of the
CPU cycles:

atomic_long_add(tg_contrib,&tg->load_avg);
atomic_long_read(&tg->load_avg) + 1);

This patch reduces the contention on the load_avg variable (and
secondarily on the runnable_avg variable) by the following 2 measures:

1. Make the load_avg and runnable_avg fields of the task_group
structure sit in their own cacheline without sharing it with others.
This only applies if the kernel is built for NUMA systems with
multiple sockets.
How much of the benefit comes from this (and how much for load_avg vs
runnable_avg vs just one separate cache_line for the pair)?

Below are the performance data for different cacheline placement:

Cacheline Placement | %CPU | JPM |
---------------------+-------+--------+
2 separate cachelines| 0.55% | 405803 |
1 common cacheline | 1.01% | 403462 |
2nd change only | 1.06% | 403820 |
Original code | 1.22% | 398509 |

It seems like forcing the 2 fields to be in the same cacheline actually make it perform a little bit worse. It is likely that the 2 fields were actually in 2 different cacheline in x86.

2. Use atomic_long_add_return() to update the fields and save the
returned value in a temporary location in the cfs structure to
be used later instead of reading the fields directly.

This is safe for tg->runnable_avg, as it only lasts for one line of
__update_entity_load_avg_contrib, and is never used for rq->cfs. That
said, given that it is such a short and contained duration it seems
simpler to just pass it around in __update_entity_load_avg_contrib
rather than make a new field on cfs_rq.

Thank for the suggestion, I will look into that.

The second change does require some changes in the ordering of how
some of the average counts are being computed and hence may have a
slight effect on their behavior.

With these 2 changes, the perf profile becomes:

0.42% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_cfs_rq_blocked_load
0.05% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_cfs_shares
0.04% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] update_curr
0.04% reaim [kernel.kallsyms] [k] entity_tick

The %CPU cycle is reduced to about 0.55%. It is not a big change,
but it did improve the compute benchmark slightly from 398509 JPM
(Jobs/Minute) to 405803 JPM which is about 2% improvement and reduced
the reported systime from 50.03s to 48.37s.

Signed-off-by: Waiman Long<Waiman.Long@xxxxxx>
---
kernel/sched/fair.c | 29 ++++++++++++++++++++++-------
kernel/sched/sched.h | 14 ++++++++++++--
2 files changed, 34 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/fair.c b/kernel/sched/fair.c
index c7395d9..c4aa86d 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
@@ -1868,7 +1868,10 @@ static inline long calc_tg_weight(struct task_group *tg, struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq)
* to gain a more accurate current total weight. See
* update_cfs_rq_load_contribution().
*/
- tg_weight = atomic_long_read(&tg->load_avg);
+ /* Use the saved version of tg's load_avg, if available */
+ tg_weight = cfs_rq->tg_load_save;
+ if (!tg_weight)
+ tg_weight = atomic_long_read(&tg->load_avg);
tg_weight -= cfs_rq->tg_load_contrib;
tg_weight += cfs_rq->load.weight;

@@ -2155,7 +2158,8 @@ static inline void __update_cfs_rq_tg_load_contrib(struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq,
tg_contrib -= cfs_rq->tg_load_contrib;

if (force_update || abs(tg_contrib)> cfs_rq->tg_load_contrib / 8) {
- atomic_long_add(tg_contrib,&tg->load_avg);
+ cfs_rq->tg_load_save =
+ atomic_long_add_return(tg_contrib,&tg->load_avg);
cfs_rq->tg_load_contrib += tg_contrib;
}
}
@@ -2176,7 +2180,8 @@ static inline void __update_tg_runnable_avg(struct sched_avg *sa,
contrib -= cfs_rq->tg_runnable_contrib;

if (abs(contrib)> cfs_rq->tg_runnable_contrib / 64) {
- atomic_add(contrib,&tg->runnable_avg);
+ cfs_rq->tg_runnable_save =
+ atomic_add_return(contrib,&tg->runnable_avg);
cfs_rq->tg_runnable_contrib += contrib;
}
}
@@ -2186,12 +2191,19 @@ static inline void __update_group_entity_contrib(struct sched_entity *se)
struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq = group_cfs_rq(se);
struct task_group *tg = cfs_rq->tg;
int runnable_avg;
+ long load_avg;

u64 contrib;

contrib = cfs_rq->tg_load_contrib * tg->shares;
- se->avg.load_avg_contrib = div_u64(contrib,
- atomic_long_read(&tg->load_avg) + 1);
+ /*
+ * Retrieve& clear the saved tg's load_avg and use it if not 0
+ */
+ load_avg = cfs_rq->tg_load_save;
+ cfs_rq->tg_load_save = 0;
+ if (unlikely(!load_avg))
+ load_avg = atomic_long_read(&tg->load_avg);
+ se->avg.load_avg_contrib = div_u64(contrib, load_avg + 1);

/*
* For group entities we need to compute a correction term in the case
@@ -2216,7 +2228,10 @@ static inline void __update_group_entity_contrib(struct sched_entity *se)
* of consequential size guaranteed to see n_i*w_i quickly converge to
* our upper bound of 1-cpu.
*/
- runnable_avg = atomic_read(&tg->runnable_avg);
+ runnable_avg = cfs_rq->tg_runnable_save;
+ cfs_rq->tg_runnable_save = 0;
+ if (unlikely(!runnable_avg))
+ runnable_avg = atomic_read(&tg->runnable_avg);
if (runnable_avg< NICE_0_LOAD) {
se->avg.load_avg_contrib *= runnable_avg;
se->avg.load_avg_contrib>>= NICE_0_SHIFT;
@@ -2823,9 +2838,9 @@ entity_tick(struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq, struct sched_entity *curr, int queued)
/*
* Ensure that runnable average is periodically updated.
*/
- update_entity_load_avg(curr, 1);
update_cfs_rq_blocked_load(cfs_rq, 1);
update_cfs_shares(cfs_rq);
+ update_entity_load_avg(curr, 1);
You've confused group_cfs_rq(curr) and cfs_rq=cfs_rq_of(curr) here -
there is no need to do this accuracy-reducing reordering.
update_cfs_rq_blocked_load would set cfs_rq->tg_load_save, and then
entity_tick(curr->parent) called this same tick would read this value,
the same way enqueue/dequeue will do what you wanted.

I will try to do it without reordering calls here.

That said, there is still a problem that tg_load_save could escape in
cases where __update_entity_load_avg_contrib gets skipped, either via
__update_entity_load_avg_contrib not crossing a boundary or
enqueue/dequeue aborting early due to cfs_rq_throttled. Worst case
should be accessing a value ~1ms old though, which might be acceptable.

Will provide a more detailed analysis of all possible cases in the next version of the patch.

-Longman
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