Re: EEVDF and NUMA balancing

[Julia Lawall]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2024, Vincent Guittot wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 at 15:51, Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > Your system is calling the polling mode and not the default
> > > cpuidle_idle_call() ? This could explain why I don't see such problem
> > > on my system which doesn't have polling
> > >
> > > Are you forcing the use of polling mode ?
> > > If yes, could you check that this problem disappears without forcing
> > > polling mode ?
> >
> > I expanded the code in do_idle to:
> >
> >                 if (cpu_idle_force_poll) { c1++;
> >                         tick_nohz_idle_restart_tick();
> >                         cpu_idle_poll();
> >                 } else if (tick_check_broadcast_expired()) { c2++;
> >                         tick_nohz_idle_restart_tick();
> >                         cpu_idle_poll();
> >                 } else { c3++;
> >                         cpuidle_idle_call();
> >                 }
> >
> > Later, I have:
> >
> >         trace_printk("force poll: %d: c1: %d, c2: %d, c3: %d\n",cpu_idle_force_poll, c1, c2, c3);
> >         flush_smp_call_function_queue();
> >         schedule_idle();
> >
> > force poll, c1 and c2 are always 0, and c3 is always some non-zero value.
> > Sometimes small (often 1), and sometimes large (304 or 305).
> >
> > So I don't think it's calling cpu_idle_poll().
>
> I agree that something else
>
> >
> > x86 has TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG defined to be a non zero value, which I think
> > is sufficient to cause the issue.
>
> Could you trace trace_sched_wake_idle_without_ipi() ans csd traces as well ?
> I don't understand what set need_resched() in your case; having in
> mind that I don't see the problem on my Arm systems and IIRC Peter
> said that he didn't face the problem on his x86 system.

TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG doesn't seem to be defined on Arm.

Peter said that he didn't see the problem, but perhaps that was just
random.  It requires a NUMA move to occur.  I make 20 runs to be sure to
see the problem at least once.  But another machine might behave
differently.

I believe the call chain is:

scheduler_tick
  trigger_load_balance
    nohz_balancer_kick
      kick_ilb
        smp_call_function_single_async
          generic_exec_single
            __smp_call_single_queue
              send_call_function_single_ipi
                call_function_single_prep_ipi
                  set_nr_if_polling <====== sets need_resched

I'll make a trace to reverify that.

julia