Re: [PATCH 0/2] arm64: Allow the rescheduling IPI to bypass irq_enter/exit

Thomas Gleixner
2020-11-03T20:33:03Z

On Sun, Nov 01 2020 at 13:14, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> Vincent recently reported [1] that 5.10-rc1 showed a significant
> regression when running "perf bench sched pipe" on arm64, and
> pinpointed it to the recent move to handling IPIs as normal
> interrupts.
>
> The culprit is the use of irq_enter/irq_exit around the handling of
> the rescheduling IPI, meaning that we enter the scheduler right after
> the handling of the IPI instead of deferring it to the next preemption
> event. This accounts for most of the overhead introduced.

irq_enter()/exit() does not end up in the scheduler. If it does then
please show the call chain.

Scheduling happens when the IPI returns just before returning into the
low level code (or on ARM in the low level code) when NEED_RESCHED is
set (which is usually the case when the IPI is sent) and:

the IPI hit user space

or

the IPI hit in preemptible kernel context and CONFIG_PREEMPT[_RT] is
enabled.

Not doing so would be a bug. So I really don't understand your reasoning
here.

> On architectures that have architected IPIs at the CPU level (x86
> being the obvious one), the absence of irq_enter/exit is natural.

It's not really architected IPIs. We reserve the top 20ish vectors on
each CPU for IPIs and other per processor interrupts, e.g. the per cpu
timer.

Now lets look at what x86 does:

Interrupts and regular IPIs (function call ....) do

irqentry_enter() <- handles rcu_irq_enter() or context tracking
...
irq_enter_rcu()
...
irq_exit_rcu()
irqentry_exit() <- handles need_resched()

The scheduler IPI does:

irqentry_enter() <- handles rcu_irq_enter() or context tracking
...
__irq_enter_raw()
...
__irq_exit_raw()
irqentry_exit() <- handles need_resched()

So we don't invoke irq_enter_rcu() on enter and on exit we skip
irq_exit_rcu(). That's fine because

- Calling the tick management is pointless because this is going to
schedule anyway or something consumed the need_resched already.

- The irqtime accounting is silly because it covers only the call and
returns. The time spent in the accounting is more than the time
we are accounting (empty call).

So what your hack fails to invoke is rcu_irq_enter()/exit() in case that
the IPI hits the idle task in an RCU off region. You also fail to tell
lockdep. No cookies!

> The bad news is that these patches are ugly as sin, and I really don't
> like them.

Yes, they are ugly and the extra conditional in the irq handling path is
not pretty either.

> I specially hate that they can give driver authors the idea that they
> can make random interrupts "faster".

Just split the guts of irq_modify_status() into __irq_modify_status()
and call that from irq_modify_status().

Reject IRQ_HIDDEN (which should have been IRQ_IPI really) and IRQ_NAKED
(IRQ_RAW perhaps) in irq_modify_status().

Do not export __irq_modify_status() so it can be only used from built-in
code which takes it away from driver writers.

We probably should add a few of the other IRQ_ bits to the reject mask
for completness sake, but that's not urgent.

Thanks,

tglx