Re: [PATCH v2 7/9] sched: define TIF_ALLOW_RESCHED

Ankur Arora
2023-09-19T19:05:57Z

Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> writes:

> On Tue, Sep 12 2023 at 10:26, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 10:04:17AM -0700, Ankur Arora wrote:
>>> > The problem with the REP prefix (and Xen hypercalls) is that
>>> > they're long running instructions and it becomes fundamentally
>>> > impossible to put a cond_resched() in.
>>> >
>>> >> Yes. I'm starting to think that that the only sane solution is to
>>> >> limit cases that can do this a lot, and the "instruciton pointer
>>> >> region" approach would certainly work.
>>> >
>>> > From a code locality / I-cache POV, I think a sorted list of
>>> > (non overlapping) ranges might be best.
>>>
>>> Yeah, agreed. There are a few problems with doing that though.
>>>
>>> I was thinking of using a check of this kind to schedule out when
>>> it is executing in this "reschedulable" section:
>>> !preempt_count() && in_resched_function(regs->rip);
>>>
>>> For preemption=full, this should mostly work.
>>> For preemption=voluntary, though this'll only work with out-of-line
>>> locks, not if the lock is inlined.
>>>
>>> (Both, should have problems with __this_cpu_* and the like, but
>>> maybe we can handwave that away with sparse/objtool etc.)
>>
>> So one thing we can do is combine the TIF_ALLOW_RESCHED with the ranges
>> thing, and then only search the range when TIF flag is set.
>>
>> And I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have objtool validate the
>> range only contains simple instructions, the moment it contains control
>> flow I'm thinking it's too complicated.
>
> Can we take a step back and look at the problem from a scheduling
> perspective?
>
> The basic operation of a non-preemptible kernel is time slice
> scheduling, which means that a task can run more or less undisturbed for
> a full time slice once it gets on the CPU unless it schedules away
> voluntary via a blocking operation.
>
> This works pretty well as long as everything runs in userspace as the
> preemption points in the return to user space path are independent of
> the preemption model.
>
> These preemption points handle both time slice exhaustion and priority
> based preemption.
>
> With PREEMPT=NONE these are the only available preemption points.
>
> That means that kernel code can run more or less indefinitely until it
> schedules out or returns to user space, which is obviously not possible
> for kernel threads.
>
> To prevent starvation the kernel gained voluntary preemption points,
> i.e. cond_resched(), which has to be added manually to code as a
> developer sees fit.
>
> Later we added PREEMPT=VOLUNTARY which utilizes might_resched() as
> additional preemption points. might_resched() utilizes the existing
> might_sched() debug points, which are in code paths which might block on
> a contended resource. These debug points are mostly in core and
> infrastructure code and are in code paths which can block anyway. The
> only difference is that they allow preemption even when the resource is
> uncontended.
>
> Additionally we have PREEMPT=FULL which utilizes every zero transition
> of preeempt_count as a potential preemption point.
>
> Now we have the situation of long running data copies or data clear
> operations which run fully in hardware, but can be interrupted. As the
> interrupt return to kernel mode does not preempt in the NONE and
> VOLUNTARY cases, new workarounds emerged. Mostly by defining a data
> chunk size and adding cond_reched() again.
>
> That's ugly and does not work for long lasting hardware operations so we
> ended up with the suggestion of TIF_ALLOW_RESCHED to work around
> that. But again this needs to be manually annotated in the same way as a
> IP range based preemption scheme requires annotation.
>
> TBH. I detest all of this.
>
> Both cond_resched() and might_sleep/sched() are completely random
> mechanisms as seen from time slice operation and the data chunk based
> mechanism is just heuristics which works as good as heuristics tend to
> work. allow_resched() is not any different and IP based preemption
> mechanism are not going to be any better.

Agreed. I was looking at how to add resched sections etc, and in
addition to the randomness the choice of where exactly to add it seemed
to be quite fuzzy. A recipe for future kruft.

> The approach here is: Prevent the scheduler to make decisions and then
> mitigate the fallout with heuristics.
>
> That's just backwards as it moves resource control out of the scheduler
> into random code which has absolutely no business to do resource
> control.
>
> We have the reverse issue observed in PREEMPT_RT. The fact that spinlock
> held sections became preemtible caused even more preemption activity
> than on a PREEMPT=FULL kernel. The worst side effect of that was
> extensive lock contention.
>
> The way how we addressed that was to add a lazy preemption mode, which
> tries to preserve the PREEMPT=FULL behaviour when the scheduler wants to
> preempt tasks which all belong to the SCHED_OTHER scheduling class. This
> works pretty well and gains back a massive amount of performance for the
> non-realtime throughput oriented tasks without affecting the
> schedulability of real-time tasks at all. IOW, it does not take control
> away from the scheduler. It cooperates with the scheduler and leaves the
> ultimate decisions to it.
>
> I think we can do something similar for the problem at hand, which
> avoids most of these heuristic horrors and control boundary violations.
>
> The main issue is that long running operations do not honour the time
> slice and we work around that with cond_resched() and now have ideas
> with this new TIF bit and IP ranges.
>
> None of that is really well defined in respect to time slices. In fact
> its not defined at all versus any aspect of scheduling behaviour.
>
> What about the following:
>
> 1) Keep preemption count and the real preemption points enabled
> unconditionally. That's not more overhead than the current
> DYNAMIC_PREEMPT mechanism as long as the preemption count does not
> go to zero, i.e. the folded NEED_RESCHED bit stays set.
>
> From earlier experiments I know that the overhead of preempt_count
> is minimal and only really observable with micro benchmarks.
> Otherwise it ends up in the noise as long as the slow path is not
> taken.
>
> I did a quick check comparing a plain inc/dec pair vs. the
> DYMANIC_PREEMPT inc/dec_and_test+NOOP mechanism and the delta is
> in the non-conclusive noise.
>
> 20 years ago this was a real issue because we did not have:
>
> - the folding of NEED_RESCHED into the preempt count
>
> - the cacheline optimizations which make the preempt count cache
> pretty much always cache hot
>
> - the hardware was way less capable
>
> I'm not saying that preempt_count is completely free today as it
> obviously adds more text and affects branch predictors, but as the
> major distros ship with DYNAMIC_PREEMPT enabled it is obviously an
> acceptable and tolerable tradeoff.
>
> 2) When the scheduler wants to set NEED_RESCHED due it sets
> NEED_RESCHED_LAZY instead which is only evaluated in the return to
> user space preemption points.
>
> As NEED_RESCHED_LAZY is not folded into the preemption count the
> preemption count won't become zero, so the task can continue until
> it hits return to user space.
>
> That preserves the existing behaviour.
>
> 3) When the scheduler tick observes that the time slice is exhausted,
> then it folds the NEED_RESCHED bit into the preempt count which
> causes the real preemption points to actually preempt including
> the return from interrupt to kernel path.

Right, and currently we check cond_resched() all the time in expectation
that something might need a resched.

Folding it in with the scheduler determining when next preemption happens
seems to make a lot of sense to me.

Thanks
Ankur

> That even allows the scheduler to enforce preemption for e.g. RT
> class tasks without changing anything else.
>
> I'm pretty sure that this gets rid of cond_resched(), which is an
> impressive list of instances:
>
> ./drivers 392
> ./fs 318
> ./mm 189
> ./kernel 184
> ./arch 95
> ./net 83
> ./include 46
> ./lib 36
> ./crypto 16
> ./sound 16
> ./block 11
> ./io_uring 13
> ./security 11
> ./ipc 3
>
> That list clearly documents that the majority of these
> cond_resched() invocations is in code which neither should care
> nor should have any influence on the core scheduling decision
> machinery.
>
> I think it's worth a try as it just fits into the existing preemption
> scheme, solves the issue of long running kernel functions, prevents
> invalid preemption and can utilize the existing instrumentation and
> debug infrastructure.
>
> Most importantly it gives control back to the scheduler and does not
> make it depend on the mercy of cond_resched(), allow_resched() or
> whatever heuristics sprinkled all over the kernel.

> To me this makes a lot of sense, but I might be on the completely wrong
> track. Se feel free to tell me that I'm completely nuts and/or just not
> seeing the obvious.
>
> Thanks,
>
> tglx

--
ankur