Preeti,
I am wondering if we aren't going to a false debate.
If the latency_req is 0, we should just poll and not enter in any idle state even if one has zero exit latency. With a zero latency req, we want full reactivity on the system, not enter an idle state with all the computation in the menu governor, no ?
I agree this patch changes the behavior on PowerPC, but only if the latency_req is set to zero. I don't think we are worried about power saving when setting this value.
Couldn't the patch accepted as it is for the sake of consistency on all the platform and then we optimize cleanly for the special latency zero case ?
On 11/06/2014 05:08 AM, Preeti U Murthy wrote:
On 11/05/2014 07:58 PM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
On 10/29/2014 03:01 AM, Preeti U Murthy wrote:
On 10/29/2014 12:29 AM, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
On 10/28/2014 04:51 AM, Preeti Murthy wrote:
Hi Daniel,
On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 2:31 PM, Daniel Lezcano daniel.lezcano@linaro.org wrote:
When the pmqos latency requirement is set to zero that means "poll in all the cases".
That is correctly implemented on x86 but not on the other archs.
As how is written the code, if the latency request is zero, the governor will return zero, so corresponding, for x86, to the poll function, but for the others arch the default idle function. For example, on ARM this is wait-for- interrupt with a latency of '1', so violating the constraint.
This is not true actually. On PowerPC the idle state 0 has an exit_latency of 0.
In order to fix that, do the latency requirement check *before* calling the cpuidle framework in order to jump to the poll function without entering cpuidle. That has several benefits:
Doing so actually hurts on PowerPC. Because the idle loop defined for idle state 0 is different from what cpu_relax() does in cpu_idle_loop(). The spinning is more power efficient in the former case. Moreover we also set certain register values which indicate an idle cpu. The ppc_runlatch bits do precisely this. These register values are being read by some user space tools. So we will end up breaking them with this patch
My suggestion is very well keep the latency requirement check in kernel/sched/idle.c like your doing in this patch. But before jumping to cpu_idle_loop verify if the idle state 0 has an exit_latency > 0 in addition to your check on the latency_req == 0. If not, you can fall through to the regular path of calling into the cpuidle driver. The scheduler can query the cpuidle_driver structure anyway.
What do you think?
Thanks for reviewing the patch and spotting this.
Wouldn't make sense to create:
void __weak_cpu_idle_poll(void) ?
and override it with your specific poll function ?
No this would become ugly as far as I can see. A weak function has to be defined under arch/* code. We will either need to duplicate the idle loop that we already have in the drivers or point the weak function to the first idle state defined by our driver. Both of which is not desirable (calling into the driver from arch code is ugly). Another reason why I don't like the idea of a weak function is that if you have missed looking at a specific driver and they have an idle loop with features similar to on powerpc, you will have to spot it yourself and include the arch specific cpu_idle_poll() for them.
Yes, I agree this is a fair point. But actually I don't see the interest of having the poll loop in the cpuidle driver. These cleanups are
We can't do that simply because the idle poll loop has arch specific bits on powerpc.
preparing the removal of the CPUIDLE_DRIVER_STATE_START macro which leads to a lot of mess in the cpuidle code.
How is the suggestion to check the exit_latency of idle state 0 when latency_req == 0 going to hinder this removal?
With the removal of this macro, we should be able to move the select loop from the menu governor and use it everywhere else. Furthermore, this state which is flagged with TIME_VALID, isn't because the local interrupt are enabled so we are measuring the interrupt time processing. Beside that the idle loop for x86 is mostly not used.
So the idea would be to extract those idle loop from the drivers and use them directly when:
- the idle selection fails (use the poll loop under certain
circumstances we have to redefine)
This behavior will not change as per my suggestion.
- when the latency req is zero
Its only here that I suggested you also verify state 0's exit_latency. For the reason that the arch may have a more optimized idle poll loop, which we cannot override with the generic cpuidle poll loop.
Regards Preeti U Murthy
That will result in a cleaner code in cpuidle and in the governor.
Do you agree with that ?
But by having a check on the exit_latency, you are claiming that since the driver's 0th idle state is no better than the generic idle loop in cases of 0 latency req, we are better off calling the latter, which looks reasonable. That way you don't have to bother about worsening the idle loop behavior on any other driver.