linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/6] x86/intel_rdt/mba_sc: Add documentation for MBA software controller

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Date:   Tue, 3 Apr 2018 16:29:42 +0200 (CEST)
From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
To:     Vikas Shivappa <vikas.shivappa@...ux.intel.com>
cc:     vikas.shivappa@...el.com, tony.luck@...el.com,
        ravi.v.shankar@...el.com, fenghua.yu@...el.com,
        sai.praneeth.prakhya@...el.com, x86@...nel.org, hpa@...or.com,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, ak@...ux.intel.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/6] x86/intel_rdt/mba_sc: Add documentation for MBA
 software controller

On Tue, 3 Apr 2018, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2018, Vikas Shivappa wrote:
> You said above:
> 
> > This may lead to confusion in scenarios below:
> 
> Reading the blurb after that creates even more confusion than being
> helpful.
> 
> First of all this information should not be under the section 'Memory
> bandwidth in MB/s'.
> 
> Also please write bandwidth. The weird acronym b/w (band per width???) is
> really not increasing legibility. 
> 
> What you really want is a general section about memory bandwidth allocation
> where you explain the technical background in purely technical terms w/o
> fairy tale mode. Technical descriptions have to be factual and not
> 'could/may/would'. 
> 
> If I decode the above correctly then the current percentage based
> implementation was buggy from the very beginning in several ways.
> 
> Now the obvious question which is in no way answered by the cover letter is
> why the current percentage based implementation cannot be fixed and we need
> some feedback driven magic to achieve that. I assume you spent some brain
> cycles on that question, so it would be really helpful if you shared that.
> 
> If I understand it correctly then the problem is that the throttling
> mechanism is per core and affects the L2 external bandwidth.
> 
>   Is this really per core? What about hyper threads. Both threads have that
>   MSR. How is that working?
> 
> The L2 external bandwidth is higher than the L3 external bandwidth.
> 
>   Is there any information available from CPUID or whatever source which
>   allows us to retrieve the bandwidth ratio or the absolute maximum
>   bandwidth per level?
> 
> What's also missing from your explanation is how that feedback loop behaves
> under different workloads.
> 
>   Is this assuming that the involved threads/cpus actually try to utilize
>   the bandwidth completely?
> 
>   What happens if the threads/cpus are only using a small set because they
>   are idle or their computations are mostly cache local and do not need
>   external bandwidth? Looking at the implementation I don't see how that is
>   taken into account.

Forgot to mention the following:

  The proposed new interface has no upper limit. The existing percentage
  based implementation has at least some notion of limit and scale; not
  really helpful either because of the hardware implementation. but I

  How is the poor admin supposed to configure that new thing without
  knowing what the actual hardware limits are in the first place?

Thanks,

	tglx