Date:	Wed, 20 May 2009 15:41:55 +0200
From:	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
To:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>
Cc:	Len Brown <lenb@...nel.org>, Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@...el.com>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org" <linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org>,
	"menage@...gle.com" <menage@...gle.com>,
	Vaidyanathan Srinivasan <svaidy@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH]cpuset: add new API to change cpuset top group's cpus

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 15:13 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> Thanks for the explanation.
> 
> My naive reaction would be to fail if the socket to be taken out
> is the only member of some cpuset. Or maybe break affinities in this case.

Right, breaking affinities would go against the policy of the admin, I'm
not sure we'd want to go there. We could start generating msgs about how
we're in thermal trouble and the given configuration is obstructing
counter measures etc..

Currently hot-unplug does break affinities, but that's an explicit
action by the admin himself, so he gets what he asks for (and we do
generate complaints in syslog about it).

[ Same scenario for the HPC guys who affinity fix all their threads to
  specific cpus, there's really nothing you can do there. Then again
  such folks generally run their machines at 100% so they'd better
  be able to deal with their thermal peak capacity anyway. ]

> > You really want to start shrinking the generic computational capacity
> > first.
> 
> One general issue to remember that if you don't react to the platform hint 
> the platform will likely force a lower p-state on you to not exceed
> the thermal limits, making everyone slower. 
> 
> (this will likely also not make your real time process happy)

Quite.

> So it's a bit more than a hint; it's more like a command "or else"
> 
> So it's a good idea to react or at least make at least a reasonable attempt 
> to react.

Sure, does the thing give more than a: 'react now, or else' impulse?
That is, can we see it coming, or will we have to deal with it when
we're there?

The latter also has the problem that you have to react very quickly.

> > The thing is, you cannot simply rip cpus out from under a system, people
> > might rely on them being there and have policy attached to them -- esp.
> > people touching cpusets should know that a machine isn't configured
> > homogeneous and any odd cpu will do.
> 
> Ok, so do you think it's possible to figure out based on the cpuset
> graph / real time runqueue if a socket can be taken out? 

Right, so all of this depends on a number of things, how frequent and
how fast would these situations occur?

I would think they'd be rare events, otherwise you really messed up your
infrastructure. I also think reaction times should be in the seconds,
otherwise you're cutting it way to close.


The work IBM has been doing is centered around overloading neighbouring
packages in order to keep some idle. The overload is exposed as a
percentage.

This works within scheduling domains, so if you carve your machine up in
tiny (<= 1 package) domains its impossible to do anything (corner case,
we could send cries for help syslog's way).

I was hoping we could control the situation with that. But for that to
work we need some gradual information in order to make that
thermal<->overload feedback work.


A single: idle a core now (< 'n' sec) or die, isn't really helpful.

[ figuring out how to deal with RT tasks and the like is still open,
  the problem with SCHED_FIFO/RR is that such tasks don't give
  utilization numbers, so we'll have to guesstimate them based on
  historic behaviour.  SCHED_EDF or similar future realtime bits
  would be much easier to deal with in this case ]
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