Re: [PATCH v6 1/1] sched/fair: Fix low cpu usage with high throttling by removing expiration of cpu-local slices

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 01:13:09PM -0400, Phil Auld wrote:
> Hi Dave,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 11:44:26AM -0500 Dave Chiluk wrote:
> > It has been observed, that highly-threaded, non-cpu-bound applications
> > running under cpu.cfs_quota_us constraints can hit a high percentage of
> > periods throttled while simultaneously not consuming the allocated
> > amount of quota. This use case is typical of user-interactive non-cpu
> > bound applications, such as those running in kubernetes or mesos when
> > run on multiple cpu cores.
> > 
> > This has been root caused to cpu-local run queue being allocated per cpu
> > bandwidth slices, and then not fully using that slice within the period.
> > At which point the slice and quota expires. This expiration of unused
> > slice results in applications not being able to utilize the quota for
> > which they are allocated.
> > 
> > The non-expiration of per-cpu slices was recently fixed by
> > 'commit 512ac999d275 ("sched/fair: Fix bandwidth timer clock drift
> > condition")'. Prior to that it appears that this had been broken since
> > at least 'commit 51f2176d74ac ("sched/fair: Fix unlocked reads of some
> > cfs_b->quota/period")' which was introduced in v3.16-rc1 in 2014. That
> > added the following conditional which resulted in slices never being
> > expired.
> > 
> > if (cfs_rq->runtime_expires != cfs_b->runtime_expires) {
> > 	/* extend local deadline, drift is bounded above by 2 ticks */
> > 	cfs_rq->runtime_expires += TICK_NSEC;
> > 
> > Because this was broken for nearly 5 years, and has recently been fixed
> > and is now being noticed by many users running kubernetes
> > (https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/67577) it is my opinion
> > that the mechanisms around expiring runtime should be removed
> > altogether.
> > 
> > This allows quota already allocated to per-cpu run-queues to live longer
> > than the period boundary. This allows threads on runqueues that do not
> > use much CPU to continue to use their remaining slice over a longer
> > period of time than cpu.cfs_period_us. However, this helps prevent the
> > above condition of hitting throttling while also not fully utilizing
> > your cpu quota.
> > 
> > This theoretically allows a machine to use slightly more than its
> > allotted quota in some periods. This overflow would be bounded by the
> > remaining quota left on each per-cpu runqueueu. This is typically no
> > more than min_cfs_rq_runtime=1ms per cpu. For CPU bound tasks this will
> > change nothing, as they should theoretically fully utilize all of their
> > quota in each period. For user-interactive tasks as described above this
> > provides a much better user/application experience as their cpu
> > utilization will more closely match the amount they requested when they
> > hit throttling. This means that cpu limits no longer strictly apply per
> > period for non-cpu bound applications, but that they are still accurate
> > over longer timeframes.
> > 
> > This greatly improves performance of high-thread-count, non-cpu bound
> > applications with low cfs_quota_us allocation on high-core-count
> > machines. In the case of an artificial testcase (10ms/100ms of quota on
> > 80 CPU machine), this commit resulted in almost 30x performance
> > improvement, while still maintaining correct cpu quota restrictions.
> > That testcase is available at https://github.com/indeedeng/fibtest.
> > 
> > Fixes: 512ac999d275 ("sched/fair: Fix bandwidth timer clock drift condition")
> > Signed-off-by: Dave Chiluk <chiluk+linux@indeed.com>
> > Reviewed-by: Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>
> 
> This still works for me. The documentation reads pretty well, too. Good job.
> 
> Feel free to add my Acked-by: or Reviewed-by: Phil Auld <pauld@redhat.com>.

Thanks guys!