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authorMarcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>2019-07-03 20:51:28 -0300
committerRafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>2019-07-30 17:27:37 +0200
commit2cffe9f6b96fece065ee8522673c90e92ef2085d (patch)
tree9d8f97f6710e7abfd7698705ba75bad51401be6f /Documentation/virtual/guest-halt-polling.txt
parent7d4daeedd575bbc3c40c87fc6708a8b88c50fe7e (diff)
cpuidle: add haltpoll governor
The cpuidle_haltpoll governor, in conjunction with the haltpoll cpuidle driver, allows guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before halting. This provides the following benefits to host side polling: 1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup. 2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided. The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed even with other runnable tasks in the host. Results comparing halt_poll_ns and server/client application where a small packet is ping-ponged: host --> 31.33 halt_poll_ns=300000 / no guest busy spin --> 33.40 (93.8%) halt_poll_ns=0 / guest_halt_poll_ns=300000 --> 32.73 (95.7%) For the SAP HANA benchmarks (where idle_spin is a parameter of the previous version of the patch, results should be the same): hpns == halt_poll_ns idle_spin=0/ idle_spin=800/ idle_spin=0/ hpns=200000 hpns=0 hpns=800000 DeleteC06T03 (100 thread) 1.76 1.71 (-3%) 1.78 (+1%) InsertC16T02 (100 thread) 2.14 2.07 (-3%) 2.18 (+1.8%) DeleteC00T01 (1 thread) 1.34 1.28 (-4.5%) 1.29 (-3.7%) UpdateC00T03 (1 thread) 4.72 4.18 (-12%) 4.53 (-5%) Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
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+Guest halt polling
+==================
+
+The cpuidle_haltpoll driver, with the haltpoll governor, allows
+the guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
+halting.
+This provides the following benefits to host side polling:
+
+ 1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
+ a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
+ cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.
+
+ 2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.
+
+The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
+even with other runnable tasks in the host.
+
+The basic logic as follows: A global value, guest_halt_poll_ns,
+is configured by the user, indicating the maximum amount of
+time polling is allowed. This value is fixed.
+
+Each vcpu has an adjustable guest_halt_poll_ns
+("per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns"), which is adjusted by the algorithm
+in response to events (explained below).
+
+Module Parameters
+=================
+
+The haltpoll governor has 5 tunable module parameters:
+
+1) guest_halt_poll_ns:
+Maximum amount of time, in nanoseconds, that polling is
+performed before halting.
+
+Default: 200000
+
+2) guest_halt_poll_shrink:
+Division factor used to shrink per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when
+wakeup event occurs after the global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+3) guest_halt_poll_grow:
+Multiplication factor used to grow per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+when event occurs after per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+but before global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+4) guest_halt_poll_grow_start:
+The per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns eventually reaches zero
+in case of an idle system. This value sets the initial
+per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when growing. This can
+be increased from 10000, to avoid misses during the initial
+growth stage:
+
+10k, 20k, 40k, ... (example assumes guest_halt_poll_grow=2).
+
+Default: 50000
+
+5) guest_halt_poll_allow_shrink:
+
+Bool parameter which allows shrinking. Set to N
+to avoid it (per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns will remain
+high once achieves global guest_halt_poll_ns value).
+
+Default: Y
+
+The module parameters can be set from the debugfs files in:
+
+ /sys/module/haltpoll/parameters/
+
+Further Notes
+=============
+
+- Care should be taken when setting the guest_halt_poll_ns parameter as a
+large value has the potential to drive the cpu usage to 100% on a machine which
+would be almost entirely idle otherwise.