[RFC][PATCH] sched/core: Tweak wait_task_inactive() to force dequeue sched_delayed tasks

John Stultz
2025-04-22T04:43:59Z

It was reported that in 6.12, smpboot_create_threads() was
taking much longer then in 6.6.

I narrowed down the call path to:
smpboot_create_threads()
-> kthread_create_on_cpu()
-> kthread_bind()
-> __kthread_bind_mask()
->wait_task_inactive()

Where in wait_task_inactive() we were regularly hitting the
queued case, which sets a 1 tick timeout, which when called
multiple times in a row, accumulates quickly into a long
delay.

I noticed disabling the DELAY_DEQUEUE sched feature recovered
the performance, and it seems the newly create tasks are usually
sched_delayed and left on the runqueue.

So in wait_task_inactive() when we see the task
task_on_rq_queued(p) and p->se.sched_delayed, manually dequeue
the sched_delayed task with DEQUEUE_DELAYED, so we don't have to
constantly wait a tick.

This seems to work, but I've only lightly tested it, so I'd love
close review and feedback in case I've missed something in
wait_task_inactive(), or if there is a simpler alternative
approach.

Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>
Cc: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Cc: Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Ben Segall <bsegall@google.com>
Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>
Cc: Valentin Schneider <vschneid@redhat.com>
Cc: K Prateek Nayak <kprateek.nayak@amd.com>
Cc: kernel-team@android.com
Signed-off-by: John Stultz <jstultz@google.com>
---
kernel/sched/core.c | 8 ++++++++
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index c81cf642dba05..43f0931a3cd8a 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -2287,6 +2287,14 @@ unsigned long wait_task_inactive(struct task_struct *p, unsigned int match_state
running = task_on_cpu(rq, p);
queued = task_on_rq_queued(p);
ncsw = 0;
+ /*
+ * If task is sched_delayed, force dequeue it, to avoid always
+ * hitting the tick timeout in the queued case
+ */
+ if (!running && queued && p->se.sched_delayed) {
+ dequeue_task(rq, p, DEQUEUE_SLEEP | DEQUEUE_DELAYED);
+ queued = task_on_rq_queued(p);
+ }
if ((match = __task_state_match(p, match_state))) {
/*
* When matching on p->saved_state, consider this task
--
2.49.0.805.g082f7c87e0-goog