[PATCH v20 18/18] x86/resctrl: Update documentation with Sub-NUMA cluster changes

Tony Luck
2024-06-10T18:35:51Z

With Sub-NUMA Cluster (SNC) mode enabled the scope of monitoring resources
is per-NODE instead of per-L3 cache. Backwards compatibility is mainatined
by providing files in the mon_L3_XX directories that sum event counts
for all SNC nodes sharing an L3 cache.

New files provide per-SNC node event counts.

Users should be aware that SNC mode also affects the amount of L3 cache
available for allocation within each SNC node.

Signed-off-by: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
---
Documentation/arch/x86/resctrl.rst | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 27 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/arch/x86/resctrl.rst b/Documentation/arch/x86/resctrl.rst
index 627e23869bca..6695b7bc698d 100644
--- a/Documentation/arch/x86/resctrl.rst
+++ b/Documentation/arch/x86/resctrl.rst
@@ -375,6 +375,10 @@ When monitoring is enabled all MON groups will also contain:
all tasks in the group. In CTRL_MON groups these files provide
the sum for all tasks in the CTRL_MON group and all tasks in
MON groups. Please see example section for more details on usage.
+ On systems with Sub-NUMA Cluster (SNC) enabled there are extra
+ directories for each node (located within the "mon_L3_XX" directory
+ for the L3 cache they occupy). These are named "mon_sub_L3_YY"
+ where "YY" is the node number.

"mon_hw_id":
Available only with debug option. The identifier used by hardware
@@ -484,6 +488,29 @@ if non-contiguous 1s value is supported. On a system with a 20-bit mask
each bit represents 5% of the capacity of the cache. You could partition
the cache into four equal parts with masks: 0x1f, 0x3e0, 0x7c00, 0xf8000.

+Notes on Sub-NUMA Cluster mode
+==============================
+When SNC mode is enabled, Linux may load balance tasks between Sub-NUMA
+nodes much more readily than between regular NUMA nodes since the CPUs
+on Sub-NUMA nodes share the same L3 cache and the system may report
+the NUMA distance between Sub-NUMA nodes with a lower value than used
+for regular NUMA nodes.
+
+The top-level monitoring files in each "mon_L3_XX" directory provide
+the sum of data across all SNC nodes sharing an L3 cache instance.
+Users who bind tasks to the CPUs of a specific Sub-NUMA node can read
+the "llc_occupancy", "mbm_total_bytes", and "mbm_local_bytes" in the
+"mon_sub_L3_YY" directories to get node local data.
+
+Memory bandwidth allocation is still performed at the L3 cache
+level. I.e. throttling controls are applied to all SNC nodes.
+
+L3 cache allocation bitmaps also apply to all SNC nodes. But note that
+the amount of L3 cache represented by each bit is divided by the number
+of SNC nodes per L3 cache. E.g. with a 100MB cache on a system with 10-bit
+allocation masks each bit normally represents 10MB. With SNC mode enabled
+with two SNC nodes per L3 cache, each bit would only represent 5MB.
+
Memory bandwidth Allocation and monitoring
==========================================

--
2.45.0