linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 4/4] sched/fair: Use a recently used CPU as an idle candidate and the basis for SIS

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Date:   Thu, 01 Feb 2018 08:50:28 +0100
From:   "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...ysocki.net>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>,
        Mike Galbraith <efault@....de>,
        Matt Fleming <matt@...eblueprint.co.uk>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        srinivas.pandruvada@...ux.intel.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] sched/fair: Use a recently used CPU as an idle candidate and the basis for SIS

On Wednesday, January 31, 2018 11:17:10 AM CET Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 10:22:49AM +0100, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 2:15:31 PM CET Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> 
> > > IA32_HWP_REQUEST has "Minimum_Performance", "Maximum_Performance" and
> > > "Desired_Performance" fields which can be used to give explicit
> > > frequency hints. And we really _should_ be doing that.
> > > 
> > > Because, esp. in this scenario; a task migrating; the hardware really
> > > can't do anything sensible, whereas the OS _knows_.
> > 
> > But IA32_HWP_REQUEST is not a cheap MSR to write to.
> 
> That just means we might need to throttle writing to it, like it already
> does for the regular pstate (PERF_CTRL) msr in any case (also, is that a
> cheap msr?)
> 
> Not touching it at all seems silly.

OK

So what field precisely would you touch?  "desired"?  If so, does that actually
guarantee anything to happen?

> But now that you made me look, intel_pstate_hwp_set() is horrible crap.
> You should _never_ do things like:
> 
>   rdmsr_on_cpu()
>   /* frob value */
>   wrmsr_on_cpu()
> 
> That's insane.

I guess you mean it does too many IPIs?  Or that it shouldn't do any IPIs
at all?