Re: [PATCH] Minor scheduler fix to get rid of skipping in xmms

[Nick Piggin <piggin@cyberone.com.au>]

Andrew Theurer wrote:

>On Thursday 11 September 2003 06:04, Nick Piggin wrote:
>
>>Andrew Theurer wrote:
>>
>>>Robert Love <rml@tech9.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>>There are a _lot_ of scheduler changes in 2.6-mm, and who knows which
>>>>>ones are an improvement, a detriment, and a noop?
>>>>>
>>>>We know that sched-2.6.0-test2-mm2-A3.patch caused the regression, and
>>>>we now that sched-CAN_MIGRATE_TASK-fix.patch mostly fixed it up.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>What we don't know is whether the thing which
>>>>sched-CAN_MIGRATE_TASK-fix.patch
>>>>fixed was the thing which sched-2.6.0-test2-mm2-A3.patch broke.
>>>>
>>>Sorry for jumping into this late.  I didn't even know the can_migrate
>>>patch was being discussed, let alone in -mm :).  And to be fair, this
>>>really is Ingo's aggressive idle steal patch.
>>>
>>>Anyway, these patches are somewhat related.  It would seem that A3's
>>>shortening the tasks' run time would not only slow performance beacuse of
>>>cache thrash, but could possibly break CAN_MIGRATE's cache warmth check,
>>>right?  That in turn would stop load balancing from working well, leading
>>>to more idle time, which the CAN_MIGRATE patch sort of bypassed for idle
>>>cpus.
>>>
>>Yeah thats probably right. Good thinking.
>>
>>
>>>I see Nick's balance patch as somewhat harmless, at least combined with A3
>>>patch.  However, one concern is that the "ping-pong" steal interval is not
>>>really 200ms, but 200ms/(nr_cpus-1), which without A3, could show up as a
>>>problem, especially on an 8 way box.  In addition, I do think there's a
>>>problem with num tasks we steal.  It should not be imbalance/2, it should
>>>be: max_load - (node_nr_running / num_cpus_node).  If we steal any more
>>>than this, which is quite possible with imbalance/2, then it's likely
>>>this_cpu now has too many tasks, and some other cpu will steal again. 
>>>Using *imbalance/2 works fine on 2-way smp, but I'm pretty sure we "over
>>>steal" tasks on 4 way and up.  Anyway, I'm getting off topic here...
>>>
>>IIRC max_load is supposed to be the number of tasks on the runqueue
>>being stolen from, isn't it?
>>
>
>Yes, but I think I still got this wrong.  Ideally, once we finish stealing, 
>the busiest runqueue should not have more than node_nr_runing/nr_cpus_node, 
>but more importantly, this_cpu should not have more than  
>node_nr_running/nr_cpus_node, so maybe it should be:
>
>min(a,b) where
>a = max_load - load_average	How much we are over the load_average
>b = load_average - this_load	How much we are under the load_average
>load_average = node_nr_runing / nr_cpus_node.
>node_nr_running can be summed as we look for the busiest queue, so it should 
>not be too costly.
>if min(a,b) is neagtive (this_cpu's runqueue length was greater than 
>load_average) we don't steal at all. 
>

Oh OK you're thinking about balancing across the entire NUMA. I was just
thinking it will eventually settle down, but you're right: its probably
better to overdampen the balancing than to underdampen it.