linux-kernel - [PATCH RFC 0/5] apic: eoi optimization support

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Message-ID: <cover.1334833140.git.mst@redhat.com>
Date:	Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:03:53 +0300
From:	"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
To:	x86@...nel.org, kvm@...r.kernel.org
Cc:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>,
	Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>, gleb@...hat.com,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH RFC 0/5] apic: eoi optimization support

I'm looking at reducing the interrupt overhead for virtualized guests:
some workloads spend a large part of their time processing interrupts.
This patchset supplies infrastructure to reduce the IRQ ack overhead on
x86: the idea is to add an eoi_write callback that we can then optimize
without touching other apic functionality.

The main user will be kvm: on kvm, an EOI write from the guest causes an
expensive exit to host; we can avoid this using shared memory as the
last patch in the series demonstrates.

But I also wrote a micro-optimized version for the regular x2apic: this
shaves off a branch and about 9 instructions from EOI when x2apic is
used, and a comment in ack_APIC_irq implies that someone counted
instructions there, at some point.

Also included in the patchset are a couple of trivial macro fixes.

The patches work fine on my boxes and I did look at the
objdump output to verify that the generated code
for the micro-optimization patch looks right
and actually is shorter.

Some benchmark results below (not sure what kind of
testing is the most appropriate) show a tiny
but measureable improvement. The tests were run on
an AMD box with 24 cpus.

- A clean kernel build after reboot shows
a tiny but measureable improvement in system time
which means lower CPU overhead (though not measureable
in total time - that is dominated by user time and fluctuates
too much):

linux# reboot -f
...
linux# make clean
linux# time make -j 64 LOCALVERSION= 2>&1 > /dev/null

Before:

real    2m52.244s
user    35m53.833s
sys     6m7.194s

After:

real    2m52.827s
user    35m48.916s
sys     6m2.305s

- perf micro-benchmarks seem to consistently show
  a tiny improvement in total time as well but it's below
  the confidence level of 3 std deviations:

# ./tools/perf/perf   stat --sync --repeat 100 --null perf bench sched messaging
...
       0.414666797 seconds time elapsed ( +-  1.29% )

Performance counter stats for 'perf bench sched messaging' (100 runs):

       0.395370891 seconds time elapsed
( +-  1.04% )

# ./tools/perf/perf   stat --sync --repeat 100 --null perf bench sched pipe -l 10000
       0.307019664 seconds time elapsed
( +-  0.10% )

       0.304738024 seconds time elapsed
( +-  0.08% )

The patches are against 3.4-rc3 - let me know if
I need to rebase.

I think patches 1-2 are definitely a good idea,
and patches 3-4 might be a good idea.
Please review, and consider patches 1-4 for linux 3.5.

Thanks,
MST

Michael S. Tsirkin (5):
  apic: fix typo EIO_ACK -> EOI_ACK and document
  apic: use symbolic APIC_EOI_ACK
  x86: add apic->eoi_write callback
  x86: eoi micro-optimization
  kvm_para: guest side for eoi avoidance

 arch/x86/include/asm/apic.h            |   22 ++++++++++++--
 arch/x86/include/asm/apicdef.h         |    2 +-
 arch/x86/include/asm/bitops.h          |    6 ++-
 arch/x86/include/asm/kvm_para.h        |    2 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic_flat_64.c    |    2 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic_noop.c       |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic_numachip.c   |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/bigsmp_32.c       |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/es7000_32.c       |    2 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/numaq_32.c        |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/probe_32.c        |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/summit_32.c       |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/x2apic_cluster.c  |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/x2apic_phys.c     |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/apic/x2apic_uv_x.c     |    1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/kvm.c                  |   51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 arch/x86/platform/visws/visws_quirks.c |    2 +-
 17 files changed, 88 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

-- 
1.7.9.111.gf3fb0
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