Re: [PATCH] sched/fair: Only apply cpufreq pressure where frequency is invariant

[K Prateek Nayak <kprateek.nayak@amd.com>]

Hello folks,

On 9/7/2026 8:02 AM, Hongyan Xia wrote:
> On 9/3/2026 10:04 AM, jong wu wrote:
>> 在 2026/9/2 17:37, Hongyan Xia 写道:
>>> On 9/2/2026 4:49 PM, jong wu wrote:
>>>> 在 2026/8/25 21:05, Vincent Guittot 写道:
>>>>> On Mon, 24 Aug 2026 at 15:06, Jianyong Wu <jianyong.wu@outlook.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Vincent, Hongyan,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for your comments.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My original commit message did not clearly describe the concrete issue
>>>>>> being fixed, and its explanation based on frequency invariance was not
>>>>>> correct. After looking into this further, I found that the issue I
>>>>>> observed has a different cause: the cpuinfo.max_freq fallback added by
>>>>>> d2d5c129d07e ("cpufreq: Make cpufreq_update_pressure() fall back to
>>>>>> cpuinfo.max_freq").
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The commit message says:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>     However, in the absence of arch_scale_freq_ref(), it is reasonable
>>>>>>     to assume that cpuinfo.max_freq is the maximum sustainable 
>>>>>> frequency
>>>>>>     for the given cpufreq policy.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That assumption does not always hold.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On an x86 server using acpi-cpufreq, cpuinfo.max_freq includes the
>>>>>> autonomous boost frequency, while policy->max is resolved to the
>>>>>> highest selectable _PSS state. With boost enabled and policy->max
>>>>>> unchanged at that state, the measured CPU frequency can still exceed
>>>>>> policy->max. Thus, policy->max does not represent an effective 
>>>>>> hardware
>>>>>> maximum-frequency cap in this case.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nevertheless, the cpuinfo.max_freq fallback makes
>>>>>> cpufreq_update_pressure() calculate positive pressure for every 
>>>>>> policy,
>>>>>> although no effective maximum-frequency restriction has been applied.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The underlying issue is that cpuinfo.max_freq is the maximum possible
>>>>>> operating frequency and may include an autonomous boost frequency,
>>>>>> whereas policy->max may represent the highest selectable _PSS state.
>>>>>> Consequently, policy->max < cpuinfo.max_freq does not necessarily mean
>>>>>> that the available CPU capacity has been capped.
>>>>>
>>>>> IIUC, cpuinfo.max_freq == boost freq and policy->max reflects the
>>>>> correct highest frequency reachable by the CPU when boost is disabled
>>>>> so the cpufreq_pressure is correct. But your policy->max is not
>>>>> updated when boot is enable and doesn't reflect the highest freq
>>>>> reachable by the CPU.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Exactly. I think the root cause is that policy->max has different
>>>> semantics across cpufreq drivers. On Intel and most AMD machines it is
>>>> the maximum attainable frequency, i.e. the boost frequency when boost
>>>> is enabled. For acpi-cpufreq, however, policy->max is resolved from the
>>>> ACPI _PSS table, which does not contain the boost frequency.
>>>
>>> Proper solutions aside, I vaguely remember investigating scheduler
>>> issues on a Ryzen 7840U. That has acpi-cpufreq with only 3 OPPs. Boost
>>> frequencies are not included in those 3 and are much higher than the
>>> ACPI OPPs. I certainly managed to disable pstate and switched to
>>> acpi-cpufreq on it. I wonder if you can reproduce such issues on such a
>>> machine. Maybe this is a broader issue than we realize.
>>
>> That may well be the case, but so far I have only observed it on my own
>> machine, so I would rather not claim more than that yet.
>>
>> My current understanding is that the trigger would be the driver rather
>> than the vendor: if a system runs acpi-cpufreq and its boost frequency
>> is not present in the _PSS table, the same reasoning should apply. The
>> 7840U you describe -- 3 OPPs, boost well above the highest one -- looks
>> like it could fit that shape, but that remains a guess until it is
>> actually measured.
>>
>> I do not have a 7840U at hand. I will try to reproduce it on an Intel
>> or AMD box by forcing acpi-cpufreq (intel_pstate=disable /
>> amd_pstate=disable), then comparing the measured frequency against
>> policy->max with boost enabled and checking whether a non-zero cpufreq
>> pressure shows up while the system is unconstrained. I will report back
>> with the numbers once I have them.
> 
> I managed to reproduce the problem on an AMD 5900X. I added trace_printk 
> outputs on cpufreq pressure updates. Under AMD pstate with boost 
> frequencies I get:
> 
> [006] .....    34.096492: cpufreq_set_policy: CPU 1 has max_freq 
> 4683471, max 4683471
> 
> You can see policy->cpuinfo.max_freq and policy->max are the same.
> 
> If I force disable pstate and use ACPI OPPs with schedutil but still 
> with boost frequencies, I get:
> 
> [003] .....     4.697753: cpufreq_set_policy: CPU 1 has max_freq 
> 4680714, max 3300000
> 
> So you can see policy->max includes no boost frequencies (3300000 is the 
> highest OPP) and will trigger policy->max < policy->cpuinfo.max_freq, 
> hence applying pressure when there is actually no pressure.
> 
> The conclusion is that yes, this is a wider problem than we realize. I 
> suspect this might also be present in Intel CPUs with ACPI cpufreq.

So, I've been trying to understand these bits and looking at
cpufreq_policy_init_qos(), the "policy->cpuinfo.max_freq" should be the
frequency including the boost range but I see cpufreq_update_pressure()
and it says:

    max_freq = arch_scale_freq_ref(cpu);
    if (!max_freq)
        max_freq = policy->cpuinfo.max_freq;

    capped_freq = policy->max;

    /*
     * Handle properly the boost frequencies, which should simply clean
     * the cpufreq pressure value.
     */
    if (max_freq <= capped_freq) {
        ...
    }


Looking at this, I feel "policy->cpuinfo.max_freq" should not include
the boost frequency, or x86 should implement a arch_scale_freq_ref()
to know when boost is enabled vs disabled.

If cpufreq_update_pressure() indeed has to disregard boost frequency,
and anything above P0 is not considered as pressure, we can simply
do:

diff --git a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
index b898b6544069..068e6d6e15a1 100644
--- a/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
+++ b/drivers/cpufreq/cpufreq.c
@@ -2586,8 +2586,11 @@ static void cpufreq_update_pressure(struct cpufreq_policy *policy)
 
 	cpu = cpumask_first(policy->related_cpus);
 	max_freq = arch_scale_freq_ref(cpu);
-	if (!max_freq)
-		max_freq = policy->cpuinfo.max_freq;
+	if (!max_freq) {
+		max_freq = __resolve_freq(policy, policy->cpuinfo.max_freq,
+					  policy->max, policy->min,
+					  CPUFREQ_RELATION_H);
+	}
 
 	capped_freq = policy->max;
 
---

__resolve_freq() will cap "policy->cpuinfo.max_freq" based on the freq_table
entries if it exists (acpi-cpufreq), or otherwise return
"policy->cpuinfo.max_freq" as is for drivers that uses CPPC based scaling
(amd-pstate, intel_pstate).

Thoughts? 

-- 
Thanks and Regards,
Prateek