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Message-ID: <8760001e-0274-454c-a4e4-1f38a9695b88@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2026 15:46:22 -0500
From: Mario Roy <marioeroy@...il.com>
To: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, Chris Mason <clm@...a.com>,
 Joseph Salisbury <joseph.salisbury@...cle.com>,
 Adam Li <adamli@...amperecomputing.com>,
 Hazem Mohamed Abuelfotoh <abuehaze@...zon.com>, Josh Don <joshdon@...gle.com>
Cc: mingo@...hat.com, juri.lelli@...hat.com, vincent.guittot@...aro.org,
 dietmar.eggemann@....com, rostedt@...dmis.org, bsegall@...gle.com,
 mgorman@...e.de, vschneid@...hat.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] sched/fair: Proportional newidle balance

The patch "Proportional newidle balance" introduced a regression
with Linux 6.12.65 and 6.18.5. There is noticeable regression with
easyWave testing. [1]

The CPU is AMD Threadripper 9960X CPU (24/48). I followed the source
to install easyWave [2]. That is fetching the two tar.gz archives.


#!/bin/bash
# CXXFLAGS="-O3 $CXXFLAGS" ./configure
# make -j8

trap 'rm -f *.ssh *.idx *.log *.sshmax *.time' EXIT

OMP_NUM_THREADS=48 ./src/easywave \
   -grid examples/e2Asean.grd -source examples/BengkuluSept2007.flt \
   -time 1200


Before results with CachyOS 6.12.63-2 and 6.18.3-2 kernels.

easyWave ver.2013-04-11
Model time = 00:00:00,   elapsed: 0 msec
Model time = 00:10:00,   elapsed: 5 msec
Model time = 00:20:00,   elapsed: 10 msec
Model time = 00:30:00,   elapsed: 19 msec
...
Model time = 05:00:00,   elapsed: 2908 msec
Model time = 05:10:00,   elapsed: 3079 msec
Model time = 05:20:00,   elapsed: 3307 msec
Model time = 05:30:00,   elapsed: 3503 msec
...

After results with CachyOS 6.12.66-2 and 6.18.6-2 kernels.

easyWave ver.2013-04-11
Model time = 00:00:00,   elapsed: 0 msec
Model time = 00:10:00,   elapsed: 5 msec
Model time = 00:20:00,   elapsed: 10 msec
Model time = 00:30:00,   elapsed: 18 msec
...
Model time = 05:00:00,   elapsed: 13057 msec  (normal is < 3.0s)
Model time = 05:10:00,   elapsed: 13512 msec
Model time = 05:20:00,   elapsed: 13833 msec
Model time = 05:30:00,   elapsed: 14206 msec
...


Reverting the patch "sched/fair: Proportional newidle balance"
returns back to prior performance.

[1] https://openbenchmarking.org/test/pts/easywave
[2] 
https://openbenchmarking.org/innhold/da7f1cf159033fdfbb925102284aea8a83e8afdc

On 11/7/25 11:06 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> Add a randomized algorithm that runs newidle balancing proportional to
> its success rate.
>
> This improves schbench significantly:
>
>   6.18-rc4:			2.22 Mrps/s
>   6.18-rc4+revert:		2.04 Mrps/s
>   6.18-rc4+revert+random:	2.18 Mrps/S
>
> Conversely, per Adam Li this affects SpecJBB slightly, reducing it by 1%:
>
>   6.17:			-6%
>   6.17+revert:		 0%
>   6.17+revert+random:	-1%
>
> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@...radead.org>
> ---
>   include/linux/sched/topology.h |    3 ++
>   kernel/sched/core.c            |    3 ++
>   kernel/sched/fair.c            |   43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
>   kernel/sched/features.h        |    5 ++++
>   kernel/sched/sched.h           |    7 ++++++
>   kernel/sched/topology.c        |    6 +++++
>   6 files changed, 63 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> --- a/include/linux/sched/topology.h
> +++ b/include/linux/sched/topology.h
> @@ -92,6 +92,9 @@ struct sched_domain {
>   	unsigned int nr_balance_failed; /* initialise to 0 */
>   
>   	/* idle_balance() stats */
> +	unsigned int newidle_call;
> +	unsigned int newidle_success;
> +	unsigned int newidle_ratio;
>   	u64 max_newidle_lb_cost;
>   	unsigned long last_decay_max_lb_cost;
>   
> --- a/kernel/sched/core.c
> +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
> @@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ EXPORT_TRACEPOINT_SYMBOL_GPL(sched_updat
>   EXPORT_TRACEPOINT_SYMBOL_GPL(sched_compute_energy_tp);
>   
>   DEFINE_PER_CPU_SHARED_ALIGNED(struct rq, runqueues);
> +DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct rnd_state, sched_rnd_state);
>   
>   #ifdef CONFIG_SCHED_PROXY_EXEC
>   DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_TRUE(__sched_proxy_exec);
> @@ -8589,6 +8590,8 @@ void __init sched_init_smp(void)
>   {
>   	sched_init_numa(NUMA_NO_NODE);
>   
> +	prandom_init_once(&sched_rnd_state);
> +
>   	/*
>   	 * There's no userspace yet to cause hotplug operations; hence all the
>   	 * CPU masks are stable and all blatant races in the below code cannot
> --- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
> +++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
> @@ -12146,11 +12146,26 @@ void update_max_interval(void)
>   	max_load_balance_interval = HZ*num_online_cpus()/10;
>   }
>   
> -static inline bool update_newidle_cost(struct sched_domain *sd, u64 cost)
> +static inline void update_newidle_stats(struct sched_domain *sd, unsigned int success)
> +{
> +	sd->newidle_call++;
> +	sd->newidle_success += success;
> +
> +	if (sd->newidle_call >= 1024) {
> +		sd->newidle_ratio = sd->newidle_success;
> +		sd->newidle_call /= 2;
> +		sd->newidle_success /= 2;
> +	}
> +}
> +
> +static inline bool
> +update_newidle_cost(struct sched_domain *sd, u64 cost, unsigned int success)
>   {
>   	unsigned long next_decay = sd->last_decay_max_lb_cost + HZ;
>   	unsigned long now = jiffies;
>   
> +	update_newidle_stats(sd, success);
> +
>   	if (cost > sd->max_newidle_lb_cost) {
>   		/*
>   		 * Track max cost of a domain to make sure to not delay the
> @@ -12198,7 +12213,7 @@ static void sched_balance_domains(struct
>   		 * Decay the newidle max times here because this is a regular
>   		 * visit to all the domains.
>   		 */
> -		need_decay = update_newidle_cost(sd, 0);
> +		need_decay = update_newidle_cost(sd, 0, 0);
>   		max_cost += sd->max_newidle_lb_cost;
>   
>   		/*
> @@ -12843,6 +12858,22 @@ static int sched_balance_newidle(struct
>   			break;
>   
>   		if (sd->flags & SD_BALANCE_NEWIDLE) {
> +			unsigned int weight = 1;
> +
> +			if (sched_feat(NI_RANDOM)) {
> +				/*
> +				 * Throw a 1k sided dice; and only run
> +				 * newidle_balance according to the success
> +				 * rate.
> +				 */
> +				u32 d1k = sched_rng() % 1024;
> +				weight = 1 + sd->newidle_ratio;
> +				if (d1k > weight) {
> +					update_newidle_stats(sd, 0);
> +					continue;
> +				}
> +				weight = (1024 + weight/2) / weight;
> +			}
>   
>   			pulled_task = sched_balance_rq(this_cpu, this_rq,
>   						   sd, CPU_NEWLY_IDLE,
> @@ -12850,10 +12881,14 @@ static int sched_balance_newidle(struct
>   
>   			t1 = sched_clock_cpu(this_cpu);
>   			domain_cost = t1 - t0;
> -			update_newidle_cost(sd, domain_cost);
> -
>   			curr_cost += domain_cost;
>   			t0 = t1;
> +
> +			/*
> +			 * Track max cost of a domain to make sure to not delay the
> +			 * next wakeup on the CPU.
> +			 */
> +			update_newidle_cost(sd, domain_cost, weight * !!pulled_task);
>   		}
>   
>   		/*
> --- a/kernel/sched/features.h
> +++ b/kernel/sched/features.h
> @@ -121,3 +121,8 @@ SCHED_FEAT(WA_BIAS, true)
>   SCHED_FEAT(UTIL_EST, true)
>   
>   SCHED_FEAT(LATENCY_WARN, false)
> +
> +/*
> + * Do newidle balancing proportional to its success rate using randomization.
> + */
> +SCHED_FEAT(NI_RANDOM, true)
> --- a/kernel/sched/sched.h
> +++ b/kernel/sched/sched.h
> @@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
>   #ifndef _KERNEL_SCHED_SCHED_H
>   #define _KERNEL_SCHED_SCHED_H
>   
> +#include <linux/prandom.h>
>   #include <linux/sched/affinity.h>
>   #include <linux/sched/autogroup.h>
>   #include <linux/sched/cpufreq.h>
> @@ -1348,6 +1349,12 @@ static inline bool is_migration_disabled
>   }
>   
>   DECLARE_PER_CPU_SHARED_ALIGNED(struct rq, runqueues);
> +DECLARE_PER_CPU(struct rnd_state, sched_rnd_state);
> +
> +static inline u32 sched_rng(void)
> +{
> +	return prandom_u32_state(this_cpu_ptr(&sched_rnd_state));
> +}
>   
>   #define cpu_rq(cpu)		(&per_cpu(runqueues, (cpu)))
>   #define this_rq()		this_cpu_ptr(&runqueues)
> --- a/kernel/sched/topology.c
> +++ b/kernel/sched/topology.c
> @@ -1662,6 +1662,12 @@ sd_init(struct sched_domain_topology_lev
>   
>   		.last_balance		= jiffies,
>   		.balance_interval	= sd_weight,
> +
> +		/* 50% success rate */
> +		.newidle_call		= 512,
> +		.newidle_success	= 256,
> +		.newidle_ratio		= 512,
> +
>   		.max_newidle_lb_cost	= 0,
>   		.last_decay_max_lb_cost	= jiffies,
>   		.child			= child,
>
>

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