During load balance, the scheduler evaluates the number of tasks that a group of CPUs can handle. The current method assumes that tasks have a fix load of SCHED_LOAD_SCALE and CPUs have a default capacity of SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE. This assumption generates wrong decision by creating ghost cores or by removing real ones when the original capacity of CPUs is different from the default SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE. We don't try anymore to evaluate the number of available cores based on the group_capacity but instead we evaluate the usage of a group and compare it with its capacity
This patchset mainly replaces the old capacity method by a new one and has kept the policy almost unchanged whereas we could certainly take advantage of this new statistic in several other places of the load balance.
The utilization_avg_contrib is based on the current implementation of the load avg tracking. I also have a version of the utilization_avg_contrib that is based on the new implementation proposal [1] but haven't provide the patches and results as [1] is still under review. I can provide change above [1] to change how utilization_avg_contrib is computed and adapt to new mecanism.
Change since V5 - remove patches that have been merged since v5 : patches 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07 - update commit log and add more details on the purpose of the patches - fix/remove useless code with the rebase on patchset [2] - remove capacity_orig in sched_group_capacity as it is not used - move code in the right patch - add some helper function to factorize code
Change since V4 - rebase to manage conflicts with changes in selection of busiest group [4]
Change since V3: - add usage_avg_contrib statistic which sums the running time of tasks on a rq - use usage_avg_contrib instead of runnable_avg_sum for cpu_utilization - fix replacement power by capacity - update some comments
Change since V2: - rebase on top of capacity renaming - fix wake_affine statistic update - rework nohz_kick_needed - optimize the active migration of a task from CPU with reduced capacity - rename group_activity by group_utilization and remove unused total_utilization - repair SD_PREFER_SIBLING and use it for SMT level - reorder patchset to gather patches with same topics
Change since V1: - add 3 fixes - correct some commit messages - replace capacity computation by activity - take into account current cpu capacity
[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/7/18/110 [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/7/25/589
Vincent Guittot (6): sched: add per rq cpu_capacity_orig sched: move cfs task on a CPU with higher capacity sched: add utilization_avg_contrib sched: get CPU's usage statistic sched: replace capacity_factor by usage sched: add SD_PREFER_SIBLING for SMT level
include/linux/sched.h | 19 +++- kernel/sched/core.c | 15 +-- kernel/sched/debug.c | 9 +- kernel/sched/fair.c | 276 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------- kernel/sched/sched.h | 11 +- 5 files changed, 199 insertions(+), 131 deletions(-)