[PATCH] sched: allow newidle balancing to bail out of load_balance

From: Josh Don
Date: Wed Jun 08 2022 - 22:55:35 EST


While doing newidle load balancing, it is possible for new tasks to
arrive, such as with pending wakeups. newidle_balance() already accounts
for this by exiting the sched_domain load_balance() iteration if it
detects these cases. This is very important for minimizing wakeup
latency.

However, if we are already in load_balance(), we may stay there for a
while before returning back to newidle_balance(). This is most
exacerbated if we enter a 'goto redo' loop in the LBF_ALL_PINNED case. A
very straightforward workaround to this is to adjust should_we_balance()
to bail out if we're doing a CPU_NEWLY_IDLE balance and new tasks are
detected.

This was tested with the following reproduction:
- two threads that take turns sleeping and waking each other up are
affined to two cores
- a large number of threads with 100% utilization are pinned to all
other cores

Without this patch, wakeup latency was ~120us for the pair of threads,
almost entirely spent in load_balance(). With this patch, wakeup latency
is ~6us.

Signed-off-by: Josh Don <joshdon@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/sched/fair.c | 8 +++++++-
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/fair.c b/kernel/sched/fair.c
index 8c5b74f66bd3..5abf30117824 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
@@ -9834,9 +9834,15 @@ static int should_we_balance(struct lb_env *env)
/*
* In the newly idle case, we will allow all the CPUs
* to do the newly idle load balance.
+ *
+ * However, we bail out if we already have tasks or a wakeup pending,
+ * to optimize wakeup latency.
*/
- if (env->idle == CPU_NEWLY_IDLE)
+ if (env->idle == CPU_NEWLY_IDLE) {
+ if (env->dst_rq->nr_running > 0 || env->dst_rq->ttwu_pending)
+ return 0;
return 1;
+ }

/* Try to find first idle CPU */
for_each_cpu_and(cpu, group_balance_mask(sg), env->cpus) {
--
2.36.1.476.g0c4daa206d-goog