linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/4] drivers core: Introduce CPU type sysfs interface

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Message-ID: <ea20c2b8-18c8-ef76-4a16-15b7271333d1@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed, 18 Nov 2020 11:45:46 +0100
From:   Brice Goglin <brice.goglin@...il.com>
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:     Ricardo Neri <ricardo.neri-calderon@...ux.intel.com>,
        x86@...nel.org, Borislav Petkov <bp@...e.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael.j.wysocki@...el.com>,
        Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>,
        Len Brown <len.brown@...el.com>,
        "Ravi V. Shankar" <ravi.v.shankar@...el.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        "Gautham R. Shenoy" <ego@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        Kan Liang <kan.liang@...ux.intel.com>,
        Srinivas Pandruvada <srinivas.pandruvada@...ux.intel.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/4] drivers core: Introduce CPU type sysfs interface


Le 17/11/2020 à 16:55, Brice Goglin a écrit :
> Le 12/11/2020 à 11:49, Greg Kroah-Hartman a écrit :
>> On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 10:10:57AM +0100, Brice Goglin wrote:
>>> Le 12/11/2020 à 07:42, Greg Kroah-Hartman a écrit :
>>>> On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 07:19:48AM +0100, Brice Goglin wrote:
>>>>> Hello
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry for the late reply. As the first userspace consumer of this
>>>>> interface [1], I can confirm that reading a single file to get the mask
>>>>> would be better, at least for performance reason. On large platforms, we
>>>>> already have to read thousands of sysfs files to get CPU topology and
>>>>> cache information, I'd be happy not to read one more file per cpu.
>>>>>
>>>>> Reading these sysfs files is slow, and it does not scale well when
>>>>> multiple processes read them in parallel.
>>>> Really?  Where is the slowdown?  Would something like readfile() work
>>>> better for you for that?
>>>> 	https://lore.kernel.org/linux-api/20200704140250.423345-1-gregkh@linuxfoundation.org/
>>> I guess readfile would improve the sequential case by avoiding syscalls
>>> but it would not improve the parallel case since syscalls shouldn't have
>>> any parallel issue?
>> syscalls should not have parallel issues at all.
>>
>>> We've been watching the status of readfile() since it was posted on LKML
>>> 6 months ago, but we were actually wondering if it would end up being
>>> included at some point.
>> It needs a solid reason to be merged.  My "test" benchmarks are fun to
>> run, but I have yet to find a real need for it anywhere as the
>> open/read/close syscall overhead seems to be lost in the noise on any
>> real application workload that I can find.
>>
>> If you have a real need, and it reduces overhead and cpu usage, I'm more
>> than willing to update the patchset and resubmit it.
>>
>>
> Hello
>
> I updated hwloc to use readfile instead of open+read+close on all those
> small sysfs/procfs files. Unfortunately the improvement is very small,
> only a couple percents. On a 40 core server, our library starts in 38ms
> instead of 39ms. I can't deploy your patches on larger machines, but I
> tested our code on a copy of their sysfs files saved on a local disk :
> For a 256-thread KNL, we go from 15ms to 14ms. For a 896-core SGI
> machine, from 73ms to 71ms.


Sorry, I forgot to update some codepaths to properly use readfile yesterday :/
Here are updated and more precise numbers that show a non-negligible improvement.
Again, we're measuring the entire hwloc topology discovery, which includes reading
many sysfs file (improved thanks to readfile) and then building a hierarchy of
objects describing the machine (not modified).

Server sysfs files (dual-socket x 20 cores x SMT-2)
default  43.48ms +/-4.48
readfile 42.15ms +/-4.58 => 3.1% better
1971 readfile calls => 674ns improvement per call

Knight Landing sysfs stored on local hard drive (64 cores x SMT-4)
default  14.60ms +/-0.91
readfile 13.63ms +/-1.05 => 6.6% better
2940 readfile calls => 329ns improvement per call

SGI Altix UV sysfs stored on local hard drive (56 sockets x 8 coeurs x SMT-2)
default  69.12ms +/-1.40
readfile 66.03ms +/-1.35 => 4.5% better
14525 readfile calls => 212ns improvement per call

I don't know why the first case (real sysfs files) gets a much
higher standard deviation and higher improvement per readfile call.
The other two cases match what microbenmarks say
(about 200ns improvement per readfile call).

Brice




>
> I see 200ns improvement for readfile (2300) vs open+read+close (2500) on
> my server when reading a single cpu topology file. With several
> thousands of sysfs files to read in the above large hwloc tests, it
> confirms an overall improvement in the order of 1ms.
>
> So, just like you said, the overhead seems to be pretty much lost in the
> noise of hwloc doing its own stuff after reading hundreds of sysfs files :/
>
> Brice
>
>