linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] powerpc/topology: Override cpu_smt

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Date:   Tue, 4 Aug 2020 12:46:42 +0200
From:   peterz@...radead.org
To:     Srikar Dronamraju <srikar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc:     Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@...hsingularity.net>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...riel.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@....com>,
        Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@...aro.org>,
        Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@....com>,
        linuxppc-dev <linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Michael Neuling <mikey@...ling.org>,
        Gautham R Shenoy <ego@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Vaidyanathan Srinivasan <svaidy@...ux.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] powerpc/topology: Override cpu_smt_mask

On Tue, Aug 04, 2020 at 09:03:07AM +0530, Srikar Dronamraju wrote:
> On Power9 a pair of cores can be presented by the firmware as a big-core
> for backward compatibility reasons, with 4 threads per (small) core and 8
> threads per big-core. cpu_smt_mask() should generally point to the cpu mask
> of the (small)core.
> 
> In order to maintain userspace backward compatibility (with Power8 chips in
> case of Power9) in enterprise Linux systems, the topology_sibling_cpumask
> has to be set to big-core. Hence override the default cpu_smt_mask() to be
> powerpc specific allowing for better scheduling behaviour on Power.

Why does Linux userspace care about this?