Re: Cache-aware scheduling does not work well with amd big/little cores

[Klaus Kusche <klaus.kusche@computerix.info>]

Hello,

both patches in combination seem to have the desired effect.

But I just look at a bar graph showing the current load
of each core. 
The graph suggests that long-running CPU-intensive processes 
migrate to fast cores when fast cores become available.
And I have the impression that LTO compilations
finish significantly faster now.

I don't have exact numbers or benchmarks.

P.S.: I'm currently on holiday (for three weeks).
So my responses will be much slower than usual.

Greetings

Prof. Dr. Klaus Kusche
Privat: Söllmnitz 32 d, D-07554 Gera/Söllmnitz
036695/859909 klaus.kusche@computerix.info https://www.computerix.info
Dienstlich: DHGE Gera, Weg der Freundschaft 4, D-07546 Gera
klaus.kusche@dhge.de https://www.dhge.de

On 31/08/2026 04:08, Chen, Yu C wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 8/31/2026 9:53 AM, Mario Limonciello wrote:
>> Add a few others who have worked on CAS.
>>
>> On 8/29/26 10:42, Klaus Kusche wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'm running linux on an AMD Ryzen HX 370.
>>> I use Gentoo and compile a lot of things (including the kernel)
>>> with Clang using full LTO, which results in a single LTO process
>>> running for minutes on an otherwise idle processor.
>>>
>>> Before Cache-aware scheduling was introduced,
>>> AMD's pstate driver informed the scheduler about big and little cores,
>>> and the scheduler always moved those LTO processes to a big/fast core.
>>>
>>> Now, the cache-aware scheduling takes precedence over big/little
>>> scheduling: All big cores form one L3 cache domain,
>>> and all little cores form the other L3 cache domain.
>>>
>>> When a process is started on a little core (and LTO is in most cases),
>>> it will no longer be moved to a big core,
>>> even if it runs for minutes and all big cores are idle.
>>>
>>> In case of LTO this hurts twice and badly
>>> (slows down LTO not just noticeably, but dramatically:
>>> In total, any compilation with LTO-linking takes much longer
>>> compared to earlier kernels without cache-aware scheduling):
>>>
>>> * The little cores run slower (3.3 GHz instead of 5.1 GHz).
>>>
>>> * LTO linking is very cache intensive,
>>> and the L3 cache of the little cores is only half the size (8 MB)
>>> of the L3 cache of the big cores (16 MB).
>>>
>>>
>>> So if a big core is idling, and a process on a little core
>>> is long-running, big/little scheduling should overrule
>>> cache-aware scheduling and move that process to a big core,
>>> even if this moves the process to another cache domain.
>>>
>>> Greetings
>>>
>>
>> Not so sure if it would help this case but I will note there is a 
>> debugfs knob you might be able to use called aggr_tolerance (it was 
>> introduced in c1e7fe5e75ed11fa85368e5a186472afd3858f3a if you want to 
>> read more about it's background).
> 
> Thanks Mario and Kusche for bringing this issue up. Yes, we can tune Cache
> Aware scheduling via debugfs or even turn it off. The issue in current code
> is that the cache aware scheduling overwrites the strategy of asymmetric 
> scheduling,
> and Ricardo also found this issue previous and there is a patch to address
> that, by honoring CPU capacity during cache aware scheduling, for the 
> **misfit**
> task. It would be helpful to see if this patch makes things better:
> https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260825174112.2580942-1-tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com/
> 
> thanks,
> Chenyu