Re: [PATCH v3 0/3] create sysfs representation of ACPI HMAT

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 10:10:34AM +0100, Brice Goglin wrote:
> > Perhaps we can enlist /proc/iomem or a similar enumeration interface
> > to tell userspace the NUMA node and whether the kernel thinks it has
> > better or worse performance characteristics relative to base
> > system-RAM, i.e. new IORES_DESC_* values. I'm worried that if we start
> > publishing absolute numbers in sysfs userspace will default to looking
> > for specific magic numbers in sysfs vs asking the kernel for memory
> > that has performance characteristics relative to base "System RAM". In
> > other words the absolute performance information that the HMAT
> > publishes is useful to the kernel, but it's not clear that userspace
> > needs that vs a relative indicator for making NUMA node preference
> > decisions.
> 
> Some HPC users will benchmark the machine to discovery actual
> performance numbers anyway.
> However, most users won't do this. They will want to know relative
> performance of different nodes. If you normalize HMAT values by dividing
> them with system-RAM values, that's likely OK. If you just say "that
> node is faster than system RAM", it's not precise enough.

So "this memory has 800% bandwidth of normal" and "this memory has 70%
bandwidth of normal"?