Re: [PATCH] perf/core: introduce context per CPU event list

[Mark Rutland]

On Sun, Jan 01, 2017 at 01:18:27PM -0800, David Carrillo-Cisneros wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 12:20 PM, David Carrillo-Cisneros
> <davidcc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > From: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx>
> >
> > On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 05:26:32PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 02:10:37PM +0000, Mark Rutland wrote:
> >>
> >> > Sure, that sounds fine for scheduling (including big.LITTLE).
> >> >
> >> > I might still be misunderstanding something, but I don't think that
> >> > helps Kan's case: since INACTIVE events which will fail their filters
> >> > (including the CPU check) will still be in the tree, they will still
> >> > have to be iterated over.
> >> >
> >> > That is, unless we also sort the tree by event->cpu, or if in those
> >> > cases we only care about ACTIVE events and can use an active list.
> >>
> >> A few emails back up I wrote:
> >>
> >> >> If we stick all events in an RB-tree sorted on: {pmu,cpu,runtime} we
> >
> > Ah, sorry. Clearly I wouldn't pass a reading comprehension test today.
> >
> >> Looking at the code there's also cgroup muck, not entirely sure where in
> >> the sort order that should go if at all.
> >>
> >> But having pmu and cpu in there would cure the big-little and
> >> per-task-per-cpu event issues.
> >
> > Yup, that all makes sense to me now (modulo the cgroup stuff I also
> > haven't considered yet).
> 
> cgroup events are stored in each pmu's cpuctx, so they wouldn't benefit
> from a pmu,cpu sort order. Yet the RB-tree would help if it could use cgroup
> as key for cpu contexts.
> 
> Is there a reason to have runtime as part of the RB-tree?

Fairer scheduling of the events, especially where cross-group conflicts
for PMU resources are non-trivial to solve. IIRC this is the major
reason Peter wanted the RB tree in the first place.

> Couldn't a FIFO list work just fine? A node could have an ACTIVE and
> an INACTIVE FIFO list and just move the events in out the tree in ioctl and
> to/from ACTIVE from/to INACTIVE on sched in/out.
> This would speed up both sched in and sched out.
> 
> The node would be something like this:
> 
> struct ctx_rbnode {
>         struct rb_node node;
>         struct list_head active_events;
>         struct list_head inactive_events;
> };
> 
> And the insertion order would be {pmu, cpu} for task contexts (cpu == -1
> for events without fixed cpu) and {cgroup} for cpuctxs (CPU events would
> have NULL cgrp).

The problem with using a list rather than a tree is that we have to
perform a linear walk of the list every time we want to find the
relevant sub-list (e.g. scheduling, insertion). Using a tree makes
finding the relevant portion much cheaper.

> Am I interested on getting this to work as part of the cgroup context switch
> optimization that CQM/CMT needs. See discussion in:
> 
> https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9478617/
> 
> Is anyone actively working on it?

Unfortunately I have too much on my plate at the moment; I'm not
actively working on this.

I'm happy to review and test patches, though!

Thanks,
Mark.