Re: [PATCH] nohz1: Documentation

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Thu Mar 21 2013 - 14:03:28 EST


On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:41:30AM -0700, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On 3/21/2013 10:18 AM, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > o Use the "idle=poll" boot parameter. However, please note
> > that use of this parameter can cause your CPU to overheat,
> > which may cause thermal throttling to degrade your
> > latencies --and that this degradation can be even worse
> > than that of dyntick-idle.
>
> it also disables (effectively) Turbo Mode on Intel cpus... which can cost you a serious percentage of performance

Thank you, added! Please see below for the updated list.

Thanx, Paul

------------------------------------------------------------------------

o Dyntick-idle slows transitions to and from idle slightly.
In practice, this has not been a problem except for the most
aggressive real-time workloads, which have the option of disabling
dyntick-idle mode, an option that most of them take. However,
some workloads will no doubt want to use adaptive ticks to
eliminate scheduling-clock-tick latencies. Here are some
options for these workloads:

a. Use PMQOS from userspace to inform the kernel of your
latency requirements (preferred).

b. Use the "idle=mwait" boot parameter.

c. Use the "intel_idle.max_cstate=" to limit the maximum
depth C-state depth.

d. Use the "idle=poll" boot parameter. However, please note
that use of this parameter can cause your CPU to overheat,
which may cause thermal throttling to degrade your
latencies -- and that this degradation can be even worse
than that of dyntick-idle. Furthermore, this parameter
effectively disables Turbo Mode on Intel CPUs, which
can significantly reduce maximum performance.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/