linux-kernel - Too many rescheduling interrupts (still!)

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Date:	Tue, 11 Feb 2014 12:23:55 -0800
From:	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
To:	Mike Galbraith <bitbucket@...ine.de>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Too many rescheduling interrupts (still!)

Rumor has it that Linux 3.13 was supposed to get rid of all the silly
rescheduling interrupts.  It doesn't, although it does seem to have
improved the situation.

A small number of reschedule interrupts appear to be due to a race:
both resched_task and wake_up_idle_cpu do, essentially:

set_tsk_need_resched(t);
smb_mb();
if (!tsk_is_polling(t))
  smp_send_reschedule(cpu);

The problem is that set_tsk_need_resched wakes the CPU and, if the CPU
is too quick (which isn't surprising if it was in C0 or C1), then it
could *clear* TS_POLLING before tsk_is_polling is read.

Is there a good reason that TIF_NEED_RESCHED is in thread->flags and
TS_POLLING is in thread->status?  Couldn't both of these be in the
same field in something like struct rq?  That would allow a real
atomic op here.

The more serious issue is that AFAICS default_wake_function is
completely missing the polling check.  It goes through
ttwu_queue_remote, which unconditionally sends an interrupt.

--Andy
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