Re: [PATCHv4 2/2] powerpc: implement arch_scale_smt_power for Power7

Michael Neuling
2010-02-24T11:13:47Z

> > If there's less the group will normally be balanced and we fall out and
> > end up in check_asym_packing().
> >
> > So what I tried doing with that loop is detect if there's a hole in the
> > packing before busiest. Now that I think about it, what we need to check
> > is if this_cpu (the removed cpu argument) is idle and less than busiest.
> >
> > So something like:
> >
> > static int check_asym_pacing(struct sched_domain *sd,
> > struct sd_lb_stats *sds,
> > int this_cpu, unsigned long *imbalance)
> > {
> > int busiest_cpu;
> >
> > if (!(sd->flags & SD_ASYM_PACKING))
> > return 0;
> >
> > if (!sds->busiest)
> > return 0;
> >
> > busiest_cpu = group_first_cpu(sds->busiest);
> > if (cpu_rq(this_cpu)->nr_running || this_cpu > busiest_cpu)
> > return 0;
> >
> > *imbalance = (sds->max_load * sds->busiest->cpu_power) /
> > SCHED_LOAD_SCALE;
> > return 1;
> > }
> >
> > Does that make sense?
>
> I think so.
>
> I'm seeing check_asym_packing do the right thing with the simple SMT2
> with 1 process case. It marks cpu0 as imbalanced when cpu0 is idle and
> cpu1 is busy.
>
> Unfortunately the process doesn't seem to be get migrated down though.
> Do we need to give *imbalance a higher value?

So with ego help, I traced this down a bit more.

In my simple test case (SMT2, t0 idle, t1 active) if f_b_g() hits our
new case in check_asym_packing(), load_balance then runs f_b_q().
f_b_q() has this:

if (capacity && rq->nr_running == 1 && wl > imbalance)
continue;

when check_asym_packing() hits, wl = 1783 and imbalance = 1024, so we
continue and busiest remains NULL.

load_balance then does "goto out_balanced" and it doesn't attempt to
move the task.

Based on this and on egos suggestion I pulled in Suresh Siddha patch
from: http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/2/12/352. This fixes the problem. The
process is moved down to t0.

I've only tested SMT2 so far.

Mikey