linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] cpufreq: schedutil: add up/down frequency transition rate limits

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20161121135308.GN24383@e106622-lin>
Date:   Mon, 21 Nov 2016 13:53:08 +0000
From:   Juri Lelli <Juri.Lelli@....com>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@...aro.org>,
        Rafael Wysocki <rjw@...ysocki.net>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, linaro-kernel@...ts.linaro.org,
        linux-pm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@...aro.org>,
        Robin Randhawa <robin.randhawa@....com>,
        Steve Muckle <smuckle.linux@...il.com>, tkjos@...gle.com,
        Morten Rasmussen <morten.rasmussen@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] cpufreq: schedutil: add up/down frequency transition
 rate limits

On 21/11/16 13:26, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 12:14:32PM +0000, Juri Lelli wrote:
> > On 21/11/16 11:19, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> 
> > > So no tunables and rate limits here at all please.
> > > 
> > > During LPC we discussed the rampup and decay issues and decided that we
> > > should very much first address them by playing with the PELT stuff.
> > > Morton was going to play with capping the decay on the util signal. This
> > > should greatly improve the ramp-up scenario and cure some other wobbles.
> > > 
> > > The decay can be set by changing the over-all pelt decay, if so desired.
> > > 
> > 
> > Do you mean we might want to change the decay (make it different from
> > ramp-up) once for all, or maybe we make it tunable so that we can
> > address different power/perf requirements?
> 
> So the limited decay would be the dominant factor in ramp-up time,
> leaving the regular PELT period the dominant factor for ramp-down.
> 

Hmmm, AFAIU the limited decay will help not forgetting completely the
contribution of tasks that sleep for a long time, but it won't modify
the actual ramp-up of the signal. So, for new tasks we will need to play
with a sensible initial value (trading off perf and power as usual).

> (Note that the decay limit would only be applied on the per-task signal,
> not the accumulated signal.)
> 

Right, and since schedutil consumes the latter, we could still suffer
from too frequent frequency switch events I guess (this is where the
down threshold thing came as a quick and dirty fix). Maybe we can think
of some smoothing applied to the accumulated signal, or make it decay
slower (don't really know what this means in practice, though :) ?

> It could be an option, for some, to build the kernel with a PELT window
> of 16ms or so (half its current size), this of course means regenerating
> all the constants etc.. And this very much is a compile time thing.
> 

Right. I seem to remember that helped a bit for mobile type of
workloads. But never did a thorough evaluation.

> We could fairly easy; if this is so desired; make the PELT window size a
> CONFIG option (hidden by default).
> 
> But like everything; patches should come with numbers justifying them
> etc..
> 

Sure. :)

> > > Also, there was the idea of; once the above ideas have all been
> > > explored; tying the freq ram rate to the power curve.
> > > 
> > 
> > Yep. That's an interesting one to look at, but it might require some
> > time.
> 
> Sure, just saying that we should resist knobs until all other avenues
> have been explored. Never start with a knob.