linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] powerpc/pseries/cpuhp: respect current SMT when adding new CPU

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Message-ID: <0dd90256-883d-ceec-570e-9cade65b2722@linux.ibm.com>
Date:   Tue, 14 Feb 2023 16:32:57 +0100
From:   Laurent Dufour <ldufour@...ux.ibm.com>
To:     Nathan Lynch <nathanl@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@...e.de>
Cc:     mpe@...erman.id.au, npiggin@...il.com, christophe.leroy@...roup.eu,
        Srikar Dronamraju <srikar@...ux.ibm.com>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Srikar Dronamraju <srikar@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] powerpc/pseries/cpuhp: respect current SMT when adding
 new CPU

On 13/02/2023 16:40:50, Nathan Lynch wrote:
> Michal Suchánek <msuchanek@...e.de> writes:
>> On Mon, Feb 13, 2023 at 08:46:50AM -0600, Nathan Lynch wrote:
>>> Laurent Dufour <ldufour@...ux.ibm.com> writes:
>>>> When a new CPU is added, the kernel is activating all its threads. This
>>>> leads to weird, but functional, result when adding CPU on a SMT 4 system
>>>> for instance.
>>>>
>>>> Here the newly added CPU 1 has 8 threads while the other one has 4 threads
>>>> active (system has been booted with the 'smt-enabled=4' kernel option):
>>>>
>>>> ltcden3-lp12:~ # ppc64_cpu --info
>>>> Core   0:    0*    1*    2*    3*    4     5     6     7
>>>> Core   1:    8*    9*   10*   11*   12*   13*   14*   15*
>>>>
>>>> There is no SMT value in the kernel. It is possible to run unbalanced LPAR
>>>> with 2 threads for a CPU, 4 for another one, and 5 on the latest.
>>>>
>>>> To work around this possibility, and assuming that the LPAR run with the
>>>> same number of threads for each CPU, which is the common case,
>>>
>>> I am skeptical at best of baking that assumption into this code. Mixed
>>> SMT modes within a partition doesn't strike me as an unreasonable
>>> possibility for some use cases. And if that's wrong, then we should just
>>> add a global smt value instead of using heuristics.
>>>
>>>> the number
>>>> of active threads of the CPU doing the hot-plug operation is computed. Only
>>>> that number of threads will be activated for the newly added CPU.
>>>>
>>>> This way on a LPAR running in SMT=4, newly added CPU will be running 4
>>>> threads, which is what a end user would expect.
>>>
>>> I could see why most users would prefer this new behavior. But surely
>>> some users have come to expect the existing behavior, which has been in
>>> place for years, and developed workarounds that might be broken by this
>>> change?
>>>
>>> I would suggest that to handle this well, we need to give user space
>>> more ability to tell the kernel what actions to take on added cores, on
>>> an opt-in basis.
>>>
>>> This could take the form of extending the DLPAR sysfs command set:
>>>
>>> Option 1 - Add a flag that tells the kernel not to online any threads at
>>> all; user space will online the desired threads later.
>>>
>>> Option 2 - Add an option that tells the kernel which SMT mode to apply.
>>
>> powerpc-utils grew some drmgr hooks recently so maybe the policy can be
>> moved to userspace?
> 
> I'm not sure whether the hook mechanism would come into play, but yes, I
> am suggesting that user space be given the option of overriding the
> kernel's current behavior.

I agree, sounds doable using the new drmgr hook mechanism.