Re: [PATCH v1] io_uring: Add support for napi_busy_poll

[Olivier Langlois]

One side effect that I have discovered from testing the napi_busy_poll
patch, despite improving the network timing of the threads performing
the busy poll, it is the networking performance degradation that it has
on the rest of the system.

I dedicate isolated CPUS to specific threads of my program. My kernel
is compiled with CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL. One thing that I have never really
understood is why there were still kernel threads assigned to the
isolated CPUs.

$ CORENUM=2; ps -L -e -o pid,psr,cpu,cmd | grep -E 
"^[[:space:]]+[[:digit:]]+[[:space:]]+${CORENUM}"
     24   2   - [cpuhp/2]
     25   2   - [idle_inject/2]
     26   2   - [migration/2]
     27   2   - [ksoftirqd/2]
     28   2   - [kworker/2:0-events]
     29   2   - [kworker/2:0H]
     83   2   - [kworker/2:1-mm_percpu_wq]

It is very hard to keep the CPU 100% tickless if there are still tasks
assigned to isolated CPUs by the kernel.

This question isn't really answered anywhere AFAIK:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/timers/no_hz.html
https://jeremyeder.com/2013/11/15/nohz_fullgodmode/

Those threads running on their dedicated CPUS are the ones doing the
NAPI busy polling. Because of that, those CPUs usage ramp up to 100%
and running ping on the side is now having horrible numbers:

[2022-02-19 07:27:54] INFO SOCKPP/ping ping results for 10 loops:
0. 104.16.211.191 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.926/34.987/80.048/17.016 ms
1. 104.16.212.191 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.861/34.934/79.986/17.019 ms
2. 104.16.213.191 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.876/34.949/79.965/16.997 ms
3. 104.16.214.191 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.852/34.927/79.977/17.019 ms
4. 104.16.215.191 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 9.869/34.943/79.958/16.997 ms

Doing this:
echo 990000 > /proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us

as instructed here:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-rt-group.html

fix the problem:

$ ping 104.16.211.191
PING 104.16.211.191 (104.16.211.191) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=1.05 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=0.812 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=0.864 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=0.846 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=1.23 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=6 ttl=62 time=0.957 ms
64 bytes from 104.16.211.191: icmp_seq=7 ttl=62 time=1.10 ms
^C
--- 104.16.211.191 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6230ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.812/0.979/1.231/0.142 ms

If I was to guess, I would say that it is ksoftirqd on those CPUs that
is starving and is not servicing the network packets but I wish that I
had a better understanding of what is really happening and know if it
would be possible to keep 100% those processors dedicated to my tasks
and have the network softirqs handled somewhere else to not have to
tweak /proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us to fix the issue...