netdev - Re: [PATCH v2 3/4] kthread: NUMA aware kthread_create_on

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Message-Id: <20101209164438.fae1ba4c.akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Thu, 9 Dec 2010 16:44:38 -0800
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
Cc:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>,
	Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/4] kthread: NUMA aware kthread_create_on_cpu()

On Mon, 29 Nov 2010 16:14:55 +0100
Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com> wrote:

> All kthreads being created from a single helper task, they all use
> memory from a single node for their kernel stack and task struct.
> 
> This patch suite creates kthread_create_on_cpu(), adding a 'cpu'
> parameter to parameters already used by kthread_create().
> 
> This parameter serves in allocating memory for the new kthread on its
> memory node if possible.

The name "kthread_create_on_cpu" is pretty misleading.

One would expect such a function to create a kthread which is bound to
that CPU.  But what it in fact does is to create a kthread which is
bound to all CPUs and whose stack, task_struct and thread_info were
allocated from the node which contains `cpu'.

Also, a saner interface would be one which takes the numa_node_id, not
the cpu number.

>
> ...
>
>  /**
> - * kthread_create - create a kthread.
> + * kthread_create_on_cpu - create a kthread.
>   * @threadfn: the function to run until signal_pending(current).
>   * @data: data ptr for @threadfn.
> + * @cpu: cpu number.
>   * @namefmt: printf-style name for the thread.
>   *
>   * Description: This helper function creates and names a kernel
>   * thread.  The thread will be stopped: use wake_up_process() to start
>   * it.  See also kthread_run().
>   *
> + * If thread is going to be bound on a particular cpu, give its number
> + * in @cpu, to get NUMA affinity for kthread stack, or else give -1.

This is a bit presumptuous.  The caller might wish to later bind this
thread to some or all of the CPUs on the node, rather than to a single
CPU (eg, kswapd()).


So what to do?  Maybe add a new kthread_create_node() which prepares a
kthread whose memory is bound to that node, then add a
kthread_create_cpu() convenience wrapper around that?

>
> ...
>
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