Message-ID: <20100827151807.GA14926@Krystal>
Date:	Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:18:07 -0400
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>
To:	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
	Tony Lindgren <tony@...mide.com>,
	Mike Galbraith <efault@....de>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 00/11] sched: CFS low-latency features

* Paul E. McKenney (paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com) wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 07:53:23PM -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > * Paul E. McKenney (paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com) wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 07:28:58PM -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > > > * Paul E. McKenney (paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com) wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 12:22:46AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > > > > On Thu, 26 Aug 2010, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > > > > > On Thu, 26 Aug 2010, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > Fudging fork seems dubious at best, it seems generated by the use of
> > > > > > > > timer_create(.evp->sigev_notify = SIGEV_THREAD), which is a really
> > > > > > > > broken thing to do, it has very ill defined semantics and is utterly
> > > > > > > > unable to properly cope with error cases. Furthermore its trivial to
> > > > > > > > actually correctly implement the desired behaviour, so I'm really
> > > > > > > > skeptical on this front; friends don't let friends use SIGEV_THREAD.
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > SIGEV_THREAD is the best proof that the whole posix timer interface
> > > > > > > was comitte[e]d under the influence of not to be revealed
> > > > > > > mind-altering substances.
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > I completely object to add timer specific wakeup magic and support for
> > > > > > > braindead fork orgies to the kernel proper. All that mess can be fixed
> > > > > > > in user space by using sensible functionality.
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > Providing support for misdesigned crap just for POSIX compliance
> > > > > > > reasons and to make some of the blind abusers of that very same crap
> > > > > > > happy would be a completely stupid decision.
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > In fact that would make a brilliant precedence case for forcing the
> > > > > > > kernel to solve user space madness at the expense of kernel
> > > > > > > complexity. If we follow down that road we get requests for extra
> > > > > > > functionality for AIO, networking and whatever in a split second with
> > > > > > > no real good reason to reject them anymore.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > I really risked eye cancer and digged into the glibc code.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > 	/* There is not much we can do if the allocation fails.  */
> > > > > > 	(void) pthread_create (&th, &tk->attr, timer_sigev_thread, td);
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > So if the helper thread which gets the signal fails to create the
> > > > > > thread then everything is toast.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > What about fixing the f*cked up glibc implementation in the first place
> > > > > > instead of fiddling in the kernel to support this utter madness? 
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > WTF can't the damned delivery thread not be created when timer_create
> > > > > > is called and the signal be delivered to that very thread directly via
> > > > > > SIGEV_THREAD_ID ?
> > > > > 
> > > > > C'mon, Thomas!!!  That is entirely too sensible!!!  ;-)
> > > > > 
> > > > > But if you are going to create the thread at timer_create() time,
> > > > > why not just have the new thread block for the desired duration?
> > > > 
> > > > The timer infrastructure allows things like periodic timer which restarts when
> > > > it fires, detection of missed timer events, etc. If you try doing this in a
> > > > userland thread context with a simple sleep, then your period becomes however
> > > > long you sleep for _and_ the thread execution time. This is all in all quite
> > > > different from the timer semantic.
> > > 
> > > Hmmm...  Why couldn't the thread in question set the next sleep time based
> > > on the timer period?  Yes, if the function ran for longer than the period,
> > > there would be a delay, but the POSIX semantics allow such a delay, right?
> > 
> > I'm afraid you'll have a large error accumulation over time, and getting the
> > precise picture of how much time between now and where the the period end is
> > expected to be is kind of hard to do precisely from user-space. In a few words,
> > this solution would be terrible for jitter. This is why we usually rely on
> > timers rather than delays in these periodic workloads.
> 
> Why couldn't the timer_create() call record the start time, and then
> compute the sleeps from that time?  So if timer_create() executed at
> time t=100 and the period is 5, upon awakening and completing the first
> invocation of the function in question, the thread does a sleep calculated
> to wake at t=110.

Let's focus on the userspace thread execution, right between the samping of the
current time and the call to sleep:

  Thread A
  current_time = read current time();
  sleep(period_end - current_time);

If the thread is preempted between these two operations, then we end up sleeping
for longer than what is needed. This kind of imprecision will add up over time,
so that after e.g. one day, instead of having the expected number of timer
executions, we'll have less than that. This kind of accumulated drift is an
unwanted side-effect of using delays in lieue of real periodic timers.

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
Operating System Efficiency R&D Consultant
EfficiOS Inc.
http://www.efficios.com
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