sched/fair: Add over-utilization/tipping point indicator

Energy-aware scheduling is only meant to be active while the system is
_not_ over-utilized. That is, there are spare cycles available to shift
tasks around based on their actual utilization to get a more
energy-efficient task distribution without depriving any tasks. When
above the tipping point task placement is done the traditional way based
on load_avg, spreading the tasks across as many cpus as possible based
on priority scaled load to preserve smp_nice. Below the tipping point we
want to use util_avg instead. We need to define a criteria for when we
make the switch.

The util_avg for each cpu converges towards 100% regardless of how many
additional tasks we may put on it. If we define over-utilized as:

sum_{cpus}(rq.cfs.avg.util_avg) + margin > sum_{cpus}(rq.capacity)

some individual cpus may be over-utilized running multiple tasks even
when the above condition is false. That should be okay as long as we try
to spread the tasks out to avoid per-cpu over-utilization as much as
possible and if all tasks have the _same_ priority. If the latter isn't
true, we have to consider priority to preserve smp_nice.

For example, we could have n_cpus nice=-10 util_avg=55% tasks and
n_cpus/2 nice=0 util_avg=60% tasks. Balancing based on util_avg we are
likely to end up with nice=-10 tasks sharing cpus and nice=0 tasks
getting their own as we 1.5*n_cpus tasks in total and 55%+55% is less
over-utilized than 55%+60% for those cpus that have to be shared. The
system utilization is only 85% of the system capacity, but we are
breaking smp_nice.

To be sure not to break smp_nice, we have defined over-utilization
conservatively as when any cpu in the system is fully utilized at its
highest frequency instead:

cpu_rq(any).cfs.avg.util_avg + margin > cpu_rq(any).capacity

IOW, as soon as one cpu is (nearly) 100% utilized, we switch to load_avg
to factor in priority to preserve smp_nice.

With this definition, we can skip periodic load-balance as no cpu has an
always-running task when the system is not over-utilized. All tasks will
be periodic and we can balance them at wake-up. This conservative
condition does however mean that some scenarios that could benefit from
energy-aware decisions even if one cpu is fully utilized would not get
those benefits.

For systems where some cpus might have reduced capacity on some cpus
(RT-pressure and/or big.LITTLE), we want periodic load-balance checks as
soon a just a single cpu is fully utilized as it might one of those with
reduced capacity and in that case we want to migrate it.

[ peterz: Added a comment explaining why new tasks are not accounted during
          overutilization detection. ]

Signed-off-by: Morten Rasmussen <morten.rasmussen@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Quentin Perret <quentin.perret@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: adharmap@codeaurora.org
Cc: chris.redpath@arm.com
Cc: currojerez@riseup.net
Cc: dietmar.eggemann@arm.com
Cc: edubezval@gmail.com
Cc: gregkh@linuxfoundation.org
Cc: javi.merino@kernel.org
Cc: joel@joelfernandes.org
Cc: juri.lelli@redhat.com
Cc: patrick.bellasi@arm.com
Cc: pkondeti@codeaurora.org
Cc: rjw@rjwysocki.net
Cc: skannan@codeaurora.org
Cc: smuckle@google.com
Cc: srinivas.pandruvada@linux.intel.com
Cc: thara.gopinath@linaro.org
Cc: tkjos@google.com
Cc: valentin.schneider@arm.com
Cc: vincent.guittot@linaro.org
Cc: viresh.kumar@linaro.org
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181203095628.11858-13-quentin.perret@arm.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/sched/sched.h b/kernel/sched/sched.h
index d4d984846924..0ba08924e017 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/sched.h
+++ b/kernel/sched/sched.h
@@ -718,6 +718,7 @@ struct perf_domain {
 
 /* Scheduling group status flags */
 #define SG_OVERLOAD		0x1 /* More than one runnable task on a CPU. */
+#define SG_OVERUTILIZED		0x2 /* One or more CPUs are over-utilized. */
 
 /*
  * We add the notion of a root-domain which will be used to define per-domain
@@ -741,6 +742,9 @@ struct root_domain {
 	 */
 	int			overload;
 
+	/* Indicate one or more cpus over-utilized (tipping point) */
+	int			overutilized;
+
 	/*
 	 * The bit corresponding to a CPU gets set here if such CPU has more
 	 * than one runnable -deadline task (as it is below for RT tasks).