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rcu: Reduce cache-miss initialization latencies for large systems 

Commit #0209f649 (rcu: limit rcu_node leaf-level fanout) set an upper
limit of 16 on the leaf-level fanout for the rcu_node tree.  This was
needed to reduce lock contention that was induced by the synchronization
of scheduling-clock interrupts, which was in turn needed to improve
energy efficiency for moderate-sized lightly loaded servers.

However, reducing the leaf-level fanout means that there are more
leaf-level rcu_node structures in the tree, which in turn means that
RCU's grace-period initialization incurs more cache misses.  This is
not a problem on moderate-sized servers with only a few tens of CPUs,
but becomes a major source of real-time latency spikes on systems with
many hundreds of CPUs.  In addition, the workloads running on these large
systems tend to be CPU-bound, which eliminates the energy-efficiency
advantages of synchronizing scheduling-clock interrupts.  Therefore,
these systems need maximal values for the rcu_node leaf-level fanout.

This commit addresses this problem by introducing a new kernel parameter
named RCU_FANOUT_LEAF that directly controls the leaf-level fanout.
This parameter defaults to 16 to handle the common case of a moderate
sized lightly loaded servers, but may be set higher on larger systems.

Reported-by: Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>
Reported-by: Dimitri Sivanich <sivanich@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
This commit is contained in:
Paul E. McKenney 2012-04-19 12:20:14 -07:00
parent d8169d4c36
commit 8932a63d5e
3 changed files with 31 additions and 8 deletions
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27
init/Kconfig
View File

@ -458,6 +458,33 @@ config RCU_FANOUT
Select a specific number if testing RCU itself.
Take the default if unsure.
config RCU_FANOUT_LEAF
int "Tree-based hierarchical RCU leaf-level fanout value"
range 2 RCU_FANOUT if 64BIT
range 2 RCU_FANOUT if !64BIT
depends on TREE_RCU || TREE_PREEMPT_RCU
default 16
help
This option controls the leaf-level fanout of hierarchical
implementations of RCU, and allows trading off cache misses
against lock contention. Systems that synchronize their
scheduling-clock interrupts for energy-efficiency reasons will
want the default because the smaller leaf-level fanout keeps
lock contention levels acceptably low. Very large systems
(hundreds or thousands of CPUs) will instead want to set this
value to the maximum value possible in order to reduce the
number of cache misses incurred during RCU's grace-period
initialization. These systems tend to run CPU-bound, and thus
are not helped by synchronized interrupts, and thus tend to
skew them, which reduces lock contention enough that large
leaf-level fanouts work well.
Select a specific number if testing RCU itself.
Select the maximum permissible value for large systems.
Take the default if unsure.
config RCU_FANOUT_EXACT
bool "Disable tree-based hierarchical RCU auto-balancing"
depends on TREE_RCU || TREE_PREEMPT_RCU

2
kernel/rcutree.c
View File

@ -2418,7 +2418,7 @@ static void __init rcu_init_levelspread(struct rcu_state *rsp)
for (i = NUM_RCU_LVLS - 1; i > 0; i--)
rsp->levelspread[i] = CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT;
rsp->levelspread[0] = RCU_FANOUT_LEAF;
rsp->levelspread[0] = CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT_LEAF;
}
#else /* #ifdef CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT_EXACT */
static void __init rcu_init_levelspread(struct rcu_state *rsp)

10
kernel/rcutree.h
View File

@ -29,18 +29,14 @@
#include <linux/seqlock.h>
/*
* Define shape of hierarchy based on NR_CPUS and CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT.
* Define shape of hierarchy based on NR_CPUS, CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT, and
* CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT_LEAF.
* In theory, it should be possible to add more levels straightforwardly.
* In practice, this did work well going from three levels to four.
* Of course, your mileage may vary.
*/
#define MAX_RCU_LVLS 4
#if CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT > 16
#define RCU_FANOUT_LEAF 16
#else /* #if CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT > 16 */
#define RCU_FANOUT_LEAF (CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT)
#endif /* #else #if CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT > 16 */
#define RCU_FANOUT_1 (RCU_FANOUT_LEAF)
#define RCU_FANOUT_1 (CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT_LEAF)
#define RCU_FANOUT_2 (RCU_FANOUT_1 * CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT)
#define RCU_FANOUT_3 (RCU_FANOUT_2 * CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT)
#define RCU_FANOUT_4 (RCU_FANOUT_3 * CONFIG_RCU_FANOUT)