Re: [PATCH v4 00/14] Implement call_rcu_lazy() and miscellaneous fixes

[Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 12:57:30PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 12:45:40PM -0400, Joel Fernandes wrote:
> > While I agree with you that perhaps making it more generic is better, this did
> > take a significant amount of time, testing and corner case hunting to come up
> > with, and v5 is also in the works so I'd appreciate if we can do it the
> > bypass-way and optimize later. Arguably the bypass way is quite simple and
> > allows us to leverage its effects of rcu_barrier and such. And the API will not
> > change.
> 
> Just confirming this conversation, on the hopefully unlikely off-chance
> that there is any doubt.  ;-)
> 
> That said, if there is some compelling use case that is not addressed
> by rcu_nocbs, keeping in mind that these can now be made dynamic, then
> some adjustment will of course be needed.

Right there is that too.

> 
> > > Several highlights:
> > > 
> > > 1) NOCB is most often needed for nohz_full and the latter has terrible power
> > > management. The CPU 0 is active all the time there.
> > 
> > I see. We don't use nohz_full much. NOCB itself gives good power improvement.
> > 
> > > 2) NOCB without nohz_full has extremely rare usecase (RT niche:
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAFzL-7vqTX-y06Kc3HaLqRWAYE0d=ms3TzVtZLn0c6ATrKD+Qw@mail.gmail.com/
> > > )
> > 
> > Really? Android has been using it for a long time. It seems to be quite popular
> > in the battery-powered space.
> > 
> > > 2) NOCB implies performance issues.
> > 
> > Which kinds of? There is slightly worse boot times, but I'm guessing that's do
> > with the extra scheduling overhead of the extra threads which is usually not a
> > problem except that RCU is used in the critical path of boot up (on ChromeOS).
> 
> Back in 2010, Rik van Riel reported significant slowdowns for some types
> of Java workloads, but for normal servers, not Android or ChromeOS.
> I have no idea whether similar slowdowns exist today.  But if there is
> no performance advantage to non-offloaded callbacks, we should first make
> offloading the default, and if there are no complaints after a few years,
> remove the non-offloaded case completely.

My gut feeling is that this is a bad idea. Yet I have no practical proof :o)

> My guess is that at the very least, scheduler corner cases will force
> us to keep non-offloaded callbacks, but you never know.  In any case,
> a wakeup is considerably more expensive than a non-atomic OR of a bit
> in a per-CPU variable, so there is some chance that offloading causes
> some important workloads considerable performance degradation.

Definetly!

> 
> > > 3) We are mixing up two very different things in a single list of callbacks:
> > >    lazy callbacks and flooding callbacks, as a result we are adding lots of
> > >    off-topic corner cases all around:
> > >      * a seperate lazy len field to struct rcu_cblist whose purpose is much more
> > >        general than just bypass/lazy
> > >      * "lazy" specialized parameters to general purpose cblist management
> > >        functions
> > 
> > I think just 1 or 2 functions have a new lazy param. It didn't seem too
> > intrusive to me.
> 
> It has been getting simpler!  ;-)
> 
> I bet that the lazy_len field can be a boolean and independent of
> ->cblist, and that doing that would simplify things at least a little bit.
> But, yes, an all-lazy indicator of some sort would still need to exist.

Yeah, I'll check the patch in detail.

> 
> > > 4) This is further complexifying bypass core code, nocb timer management, core
> > >    nocb group management, all of which being already very complicated.
> > 
> > True, I agree, a few more cases to handle for sure, but I think I got them all
> > now (hopefully).
> 
> If we do need lazy callbacks on non-offloaded CPUs, there will need to
> be changes to both the bypass logic (possibly just those changes that
> Joel already has, but Murphy might disagree) and to the ->cblist logic.
> At the very least, the wakeup logic would need adjustment from current
> -rcu and there would still need to be some way of tracking whether or
> not all the callbacks in the bypass list are lazy.

Sure but we can arrange for pushing the complexity in a common place between
NOCB and !NOCB.

> 
> > > 5) The !NOCB implementation is going to be very different
> > > 
> > > Ok I can admit one counter argument in favour of using NO_CB:
> > > 
> > > -1) The scheduler can benefit from a wake CPU to run the callbacks on behalf of a bunch
> > > of idle CPUs, instead of waking up that bunch of CPUs. But still we are dealing
> > > with callbacks that can actually wait...
> 
> You lost me on this one.  Having a callback invoked on a non-idle CPU
> should save significant power without significant delay in callback
> invocation.  What am I missing here?

The thing is that if the callback can wait, and does actually, then the
advantage of call_rcu_lazy() should be visible whether the callbacks are
offloaded or not.

> 
> > Yeah that's huge. Significant amount of power improvement seems to come from
> > idle CPUs not being disturbed and their corresponding timer ticks turned off for
> > longer periods. That's experimentally confirmed (NO_CB giving significant power
> > improvement on battery-power systems as compared to !NO_CB).
> > 
> > > So here is a proposal: how about forgetting NOCB for now and instead add a new
> > > RCU_LAZY_TAIL segment in the struct rcu_segcblist right after RCU_NEXT_TAIL?
> > > Then ignore that segment until some timer expiry has been met or the CPU is
> > > known to be busy? Probably some tiny bits need to be tweaked in segcblist
> > > management functions but probably not that much. And also make sure that entrain()
> > > queues to RCU_LAZY_TAIL.
> > > 
> > > Then the only difference in the case of NOCB is that we add a new timer to the
> > > nocb group leader instead of a local timer in !NOCB.
> 
> It is certainly good to look into alternatives!  Especially if this has
> somehow broken (de)offloading.  (Not seeing it in my testing, but then
> again, I have not yet tested this series all that much.)
> 
> How does the separate RCU_LAZY_TAIL segment help?  I would think
> that you would instead want an all-lazy flag on each of the existing
> RCU_NEXT_READY_TAIL and RCU_NEXT_TAIL segments.  After all, if there is
> even one non-lazy callback in either segment, we need the corresponding
> grace period to run sooner rather than later.  And if we are running a
> given grace period anyway, it costs little to handle the lazy callbacks
> while we are at it.

Good point! That sounds much better.

> Or is there a use case where it helps a lot to defer lazy callbacks that
> could have been handled by a grace period that needed to happen anyway,
> due to the presence of non-lazy callbacks?  I am having a hard time coming
> up with one, but perhaps that is a failure of imagination on my part.

I don't see one right now.

> 
> There would still need to be changes to the bypass code because NOCB is
> what gets both Android and ChromeOS big power savings.

Actually using the flag on RCU_NEXT_TAIL and RCU_NEXT_READ_TAIL would
avoid touching the bypass code.

I see a big advantage in that we don't mix up two orthogonal things anymore:
flooding callbacks (normal bypass) and callbacks that can actually wait
(lazy callbacks), both needing a different treatment.

> And yes, no matter what, rcu_barrier_entrain() needs to motivate any lazy
> callbacks.  Currently, this falls out from the flushing of the bypass.
> Presumably, offloading and deoffloading could also take advantage of
> bypass flushing.
> 
> And I have no idea whether it would make sense for the NOCB and !NOCB
> case to share a laziness-motivation timer.

No at least the timer will need to be different. It should integrate into
the existing one in NOCB whereas !NOCB should have something more simple.

> 
> > It sounds reasonable, but I'll go with Paul on the usecase argument - who would
> > actually care about lazy CBs outside of power, and would those guys ever use
> > !NO_CB if they cared about power / battery?
> 
> And if they are not using NOCB, does call_rcu_lazy() actually help?

I suspect yes, due to the frequency of grace periods lowering.

> 
> But again, if call_rcu_lazy() needs to handle the !NOCB case, then it
> needs to handle the !NOCB case.  However, given ChromeOS and Android,
> we know that it call_rcu_lazy() needs to handle the NOCB case regardless.

Right.

Thanks.