Date:	Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:27:50 -0500
From:	Andrew Theurer <habanero@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	Raghavendra K T <raghavendra.kt@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>,
	Srikar <srikar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	"Nikunj A. Dadhania" <nikunj@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	KVM <kvm@...r.kernel.org>, Jiannan Ouyang <ouyang@...pitt.edu>,
	chegu vinod <chegu_vinod@...com>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Srivatsa Vaddagiri <srivatsa.vaddagiri@...il.com>,
	Gleb Natapov <gleb@...hat.com>,
	Andrew Jones <drjones@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 1/2] kvm: Handle undercommitted guest case in PLE
 handler

On Wed, 2012-10-10 at 23:13 +0530, Raghavendra K T wrote:
> On 10/10/2012 07:54 PM, Andrew Theurer wrote:
> > I ran 'perf sched map' on the dbench workload for medium and large VMs,
> > and I thought I would share some of the results.  I think it helps to
> > visualize what's going on regarding the yielding.
> >
> > These files are png bitmaps, generated from processing output from 'perf
> > sched map' (and perf data generated from 'perf sched record').  The Y
> > axis is the host cpus, each row being 10 pixels high.  For these tests,
> > there are 80 host cpus, so the total height is 800 pixels.  The X axis
> > is time (in microseconds), with each pixel representing 1 microsecond.
> > Each bitmap plots 30,000 microseconds.  The bitmaps are quite wide
> > obviously, and zooming in/out while viewing is recommended.
> >
> > Each row (each host cpu) is assigned a color based on what thread is
> > running.  vCPUs of the same VM are assigned a common color (like red,
> > blue, magenta, etc), and each vCPU has a unique brightness for that
> > color.  There are a maximum of 12 assignable colors, so in any VMs >12
> > revert to vCPU color of gray. I would use more colors, but it becomes
> > harder to distinguish one color from another.  The white color
> > represents missing data from perf, and black color represents any thread
> > which is not a vCPU.
> >
> > For the following tests, VMs were pinned to host NUMA nodes and to
> > specific cpus to help with consistency and operate within the
> > constraints of the last test (gang scheduler).
> >
> > Here is a good example of PLE.  These are 10-way VMs, 16 of them (as
> > described above only 12 of the VMs have a color, rest are gray).
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wdmFqUmE5QjJHMFU
> 
> This looks very nice to visualize what is happening. Beginning of the 
> graph looks little messy but later it is clear.
> 
> >
> > If you zoom out and look at the whole bitmap, you may notice the 4ms
> > intervals of the scheduler.  They are pretty well aligned across all
> > cpus.  Normally, for cpu bound workloads, we would expect to see each
> > thread to run for 4 ms, then something else getting to run, and so on.
> > That is mostly true in this test.  We have 2x over-commit and we
> > generally see the switching of threads at 4ms.  One thing to note is
> > that not all vCPU threads for the same VM run at exactly the same time,
> > and that is expected and the whole reason for lock-holder preemption.
> > Now, if you zoom in on the bitmap, you should notice within the 4ms
> > intervals there is some task switching going on.  This is most likely
> > because of the yield_to initiated by the PLE handler.  In this case
> > there is not that much yielding to do.   It's quite clean, and the
> > performance is quite good.
> >
> > Below is an example of PLE, but this time with 20-way VMs, 8 of them.
> > CPU over-commit is still 2x.
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wdmFqUmE5QjJHMFU
> 
> I think this link still 10x16. Could you paste the link again?

Oops
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wSGtYYzZtRTcyVjQ

> 
> >
> > This one looks quite different.  In short, it's a mess.  The switching
> > between tasks can be lower than 10 microseconds.  It basically never
> > recovers.  There is constant yielding all the time.
> >
> > Below is again 8 x 20-way VMs, but this time I tried out Nikunj's gang
> > scheduling patches.  While I am not recommending gang scheduling, I
> > think it's a good data point.  The performance is 3.88x the PLE result.
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tfUNlZ-14wWXdscWcwNTVEY3M
> >
> > Note that the task switching intervals of 4ms are quite obvious again,
> > and this time all vCPUs from same VM run at the same time.  It
> > represents the best possible outcome.
> >
> >
> > Anyway, I thought the bitmaps might help better visualize what's going
> > on.
> >
> > -Andrew
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 


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