Re: [RFCv5 PATCH 25/46] sched: Add over-utilization/tipping point indicator

Peter Zijlstra
2015-08-13T17:35:45Z

On Tue, Jul 07, 2015 at 07:24:08PM +0100, Morten Rasmussen wrote:
> Energy-aware scheduling is only meant to be active while the system is
> _not_ over-utilized. That is, there are spare cycles available to shift
> tasks around based on their actual utilization to get a more
> energy-efficient task distribution without depriving any tasks. When
> above the tipping point task placement is done the traditional way,
> spreading the tasks across as many cpus as possible based on priority
> scaled load to preserve smp_nice.
>
> The over-utilization condition is conservatively chosen to indicate
> over-utilization as soon as one cpu is fully utilized at it's highest
> frequency. We don't consider groups as lumping usage and capacity
> together for a group of cpus may hide the fact that one or more cpus in
> the group are over-utilized while group-siblings are partially idle. The
> tasks could be served better if moved to another group with completely
> idle cpus. This is particularly problematic if some cpus have a
> significantly reduced capacity due to RT/IRQ pressure or if the system
> has cpus of different capacity (e.g. ARM big.LITTLE).

I might be tired, but I'm having a very hard time deciphering this
second paragraph.