linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] lib/group_cpus: make group CPU cluster aware

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Message-ID: <8f014fc5-093c-4614-b1eb-81695cb33d8c@intel.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2026 09:59:39 +0800
From: "Guo, Wangyang" <wangyang.guo@...el.com>
To: Radu Rendec <rrendec@...hat.com>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 Tianyou Li <tianyou.li@...el.com>, Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>,
 Dan Liang <dan.liang@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] lib/group_cpus: make group CPU cluster aware

On 1/10/2026 10:24 AM, Guo, Wangyang wrote:
> On 1/10/2026 3:13 AM, Radu Rendec wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> On Mon, 2025-12-22 at 11:03 +0800, Guo, Wangyang wrote:
>>> On 12/22/2025 3:10 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:30:38 +0800 Wangyang Guo 
>>>> <wangyang.guo@...el.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> As CPU core counts increase, the number of NVMe IRQs may be smaller 
>>>>> than
>>>>> the total number of CPUs. This forces multiple CPUs to share the same
>>>>> IRQ. If the IRQ affinity and the CPU’s cluster do not align, a
>>>>> performance penalty can be observed on some platforms.
>>>>
>>>> It would be helpful to quantify "performance penalty".  At least give
>>>> readers some approximate understanding of how serious this issue is,
>>>> please.
>>>>
>>> Thanks for your reminder, will update changelog in next version. We see
>>> 15%+ performance difference in FIO libaio/randread/bs=8k.
>>>
>>>>> This patch improves IRQ affinity by grouping CPUs by cluster within 
>>>>> each
>>>>> NUMA domain, ensuring better locality between CPUs and their assigned
>>>>> NVMe IRQs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Reviewed-by: Tianyou Li <tianyou.li@...el.com>
>>>>> Reviewed-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>
>>>>> Tested-by: Dan Liang <dan.liang@...el.com>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Wangyang Guo <wangyang.guo@...el.com>
>>>>
>>>> Patch hasn't attracted additional review so I'll queue this version for
>>>> some testing in mm.git's mm-nonmm-unstable branch.  I'll add a
>>>> note-to-self that a changelog addition is desirable.
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for your time and support! Please let me know if you have
>>> any further comments or guidance. Any feedback would be appreciated.
>>
>> With this patch applied, I see a weird issue in a qemu x86_64 vm if I
>> start it with a higher number of max CPUs than active CPUs, for example
>> `-smp 4,maxcpus=8` on the qemu command line.
>>
>> What I see is the `while (1)` loop in alloc_cluster_groups() spinning
>> forever. Removing the `maxcpus=8` from the qemu command line fixes the
>> issue but so does reverting the patch :)
> 
> Thanks for the reporting. I will investigate this problem.
The problem happens in this loop:

	/* Probe how many clusters in this node. */
	while (1) {
		cpu = cpumask_first(msk);
		if (cpu >= nr_cpu_ids)
			break;

		cluster_mask = topology_cluster_cpumask(cpu);
		/* Clean out CPUs on the same cluster. */
		cpumask_andnot(msk, msk, cluster_mask);
		ncluster++;
	}

In this case, topology_cluster_cpumask(cpu) return an empty 
cluster_mask, which causes later cpumask_andnot invalid, entering a 
endless loop.

It can be fixed by checking returned cluster_mask:

                 cluster_mask = topology_cluster_cpumask(cpu);
+               if (!cpumask_weight(cluster_mask))
+                       goto no_cluster;
                 /* Clean out CPUs on the same cluster. */
                 cpumask_andnot(msk, msk, cluster_mask);
                 ncluster++;

BR
Wangyang