Re: [PATCH 00/28] PM: QoS: Get rid of unuseful code and rework CPU latency QoS interface

Francisco Jerez
2020-02-13T08:09:15Z

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"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org> writes:

> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 1:16 AM Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 12:31 AM Francisco Jerez <currojerez@riseup.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net> writes:
>> >
>> > > Hi All,
>> > >
>> > > This series of patches is based on the observation that after commit
>> > > c3082a674f46 ("PM: QoS: Get rid of unused flags") the only global PM QoS class
>> > > in use is PM_QOS_CPU_DMA_LATENCY, but there is still a significant amount of
>> > > code dedicated to the handling of global PM QoS classes in general. That code
>> > > takes up space and adds overhead in vain, so it is better to get rid of it.
>> > >
>> > > Moreover, with that unuseful code removed, the interface for adding QoS
>> > > requests for CPU latency becomes inelegant and confusing, so it is better to
>> > > clean it up.
>> > >
>> > > Patches [01/28-12/28] do the first part described above, which also includes
>> > > some assorted cleanups of the core PM QoS code that doesn't go away.
>> > >
>> > > Patches [13/28-25/28] rework the CPU latency QoS interface (in the classic
>> > > "define stubs, migrate users, change the API proper" manner), patches
>> > > [26-27/28] update the general comments and documentation to match the code
>> > > after the previous changes and the last one makes the CPU latency QoS depend
>> > > on CPU_IDLE (because cpuidle is the only user of its target value today).
>> > >
>> > > The majority of the patches in this series don't change the functionality of
>> > > the code at all (at least not intentionally).
>> > >
>> > > Please refer to the changelogs of individual patches for details.
>> > >
>> > > Thanks!
>> >
>> > Hi Rafael,
>> >
>> > I believe some of the interfaces removed here could be useful in the
>> > near future.
>>
>> I disagree.
>>
>> > It goes back to the energy efficiency- (and IGP graphics
>> > performance-)improving series I submitted a while ago [1]. It relies on
>> > some mechanism for the graphics driver to report an I/O bottleneck to
>> > CPUFREQ, allowing it to make a more conservative trade-off between
>> > energy efficiency and latency, which can greatly reduce the CPU package
>> > energy usage of IO-bound applications (in some graphics benchmarks I've
>> > seen it reduced by over 40% on my ICL laptop), and therefore also allows
>> > TDP-bound applications to obtain a reciprocal improvement in throughput.
>> >
>> > I'm not particularly fond of the global PM QoS interfaces TBH, it seems
>> > like an excessively blunt hammer to me, so I can very much relate to the
>> > purpose of this series. However the finer-grained solution I've
>> > implemented has seen some push-back from i915 and CPUFREQ devs due to
>> > its complexity, since it relies on task scheduler changes in order to
>> > track IO bottlenecks per-process (roughly as suggested by Peter Zijlstra
>> > during our previous discussions), pretty much in the spirit of PELT but
>> > applied to IO utilization.
>> >
>> > With that in mind I was hoping we could take advantage of PM QoS as a
>> > temporary solution [2], by introducing a global PM QoS class similar but
>> > with roughly converse semantics to PM_QOS_CPU_DMA_LATENCY, allowing
>> > device drivers to report a *lower* bound on CPU latency beyond which PM
>> > shall not bother to reduce latency if doing so would have negative
>> > consequences on the energy efficiency and/or parallelism of the system.
>>
>> So I really don't quite see how that could be responded to, by cpuidle
>> say. What exactly do you mean by "reducing latency" in particular?
>>
>> > Of course one would expect the current PM_QOS_CPU_DMA_LATENCY upper
>> > bound to take precedence over the new lower bound in cases where the
>> > former is in conflict with the latter.
>>
>> So that needs to be done on top of this series.
>>
>> > I can think of several alternatives to that which don't involve
>> > temporarily holding off your clean-up,
>>
>> The cleanup goes in. Please work on top of it.
>>
>> > but none of them sound particularly exciting:
>> >
>> > 1/ Use an interface specific to CPUFREQ, pretty much like the one
>> > introduced in my original submission [1].
>>
>> It uses frequency QoS already today, do you really need something else?
>>
>> > 2/ Use per-CPU PM QoS, which AFAICT would require the graphics driver
>> > to either place a request on every CPU of the system (which would
>> > cause a frequent operation to have O(N) complexity on the number of
>> > CPUs on the system), or play a cat-and-mouse game with the task
>> > scheduler.
>>
>> That's in place already too in the form of device PM QoS; see
>> drivers/base/power/qos.c.
>>
>> > 3/ Add a new global PM QoS mechanism roughly duplicating the
>> > cpu_latency_qos_* interfaces introduced in this series. Drop your
>> > change making this available to CPU IDLE only.
>>
>> It sounds like you really want performance for energy efficiency and
>> CPU latency has a little to do with that.
>>
>> > 3/ Go straight to a scheduling-based approach, which is likely to
>> > greatly increase the review effort required to upstream this
>> > feature. (Peter might disagree though?)
>>
>> Are you familiar with the utilization clamps mechanism?
>
> And BTW, posting patches as RFC is fine even if they have not been
> tested. At least you let people know that you work on something this
> way, so if they work on changes in the same area, they may take that
> into consideration.
>

Sure, that was going to be the first RFC.

> Also if there are objections to your proposal, you may save quite a
> bit of time by sending it early.
>
> It is unfortunate that this series has clashed with the changes that
> you were about to propose, but in this particular case in my view it
> is better to clean up things and start over.
>

Luckily it doesn't clash with the second RFC I was meaning to send,
maybe we should just skip the first? Or maybe it's valuable as a
curiosity anyway?

> Thanks!

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