[PATCH v5] x86/hpet: Reduce HPET counter read contention

Waiman Long
2016-08-12T21:27:28Z

On a large system with many CPUs, using HPET as the clock source can
have a significant impact on the overall system performance because
of the following reasons:
1) There is a single HPET counter shared by all the CPUs.
2) HPET counter reading is a very slow operation.

Using HPET as the default clock source may happen when, for example,
the TSC clock calibration exceeds the allowable tolerance. Something
the performance slowdown can be so severe that the system may crash
because of a NMI watchdog soft lockup, for example.

During the TSC clock calibration process, the default clock source
will be set temporarily to HPET. For systems with many CPUs, it is
possible that NMI watchdog soft lockup may occur occasionally during
that short time period where HPET clocking is active as is shown in
the kernel log below:

[ 71.618132] NetLabel: Initializing
[ 71.621967] NetLabel: domain hash size = 128
[ 71.626848] NetLabel: protocols = UNLABELED CIPSOv4
[ 71.632418] NetLabel: unlabeled traffic allowed by default
[ 71.638679] hpet0: at MMIO 0xfed00000, IRQs 2, 8, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
[ 71.646504] hpet0: 8 comparators, 64-bit 14.318180 MHz counter
[ 71.655313] Switching to clocksource hpet
[ 95.679135] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#144 stuck for 23s! [swapper/144:0]
[ 95.693363] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#145 stuck for 23s! [swapper/145:0]
[ 95.694203] Modules linked in:
[ 95.694697] CPU: 145 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/145 Not tainted 3.10.0-327.el7.x86_64 #1
[ 95.695580] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#582 stuck for 23s! [swapper/582:0]
[ 95.696145] Hardware name: HP Superdome2 16s x86, BIOS Bundle: 008.001.006 SFW: 041.063.152 01/16/2016
[ 95.698128] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#357 stuck for 23s! [swapper/357:0]

This patch attempts to address the above issues by reducing HPET read
contention using the fact that if more than one CPUs are trying to
access HPET at the same time, it will be more efficient when only
one CPU in the group reads the HPET counter and shares it with the
rest of the group instead of each group member trying to read the
HPET counter individually.

This is done by using a combination word with a sequence number and
a bit lock. The CPU that gets the bit lock will be responsible for
reading the HPET counter and update the sequence number. The others
will monitor the change in sequence number and grab the HPET counter
value accordingly. This change is only enabled on SMP configuration.

On a 4-socket Haswell-EX box with 144 threads (HT on), running the
AIM7 compute workload (1500 users) on a 4.8-rc1 kernel (HZ=1000)
with and without the patch has the following performance numbers
(with HPET or TSC as clock source):

TSC = 1042431 jobs/min
HPET w/o patch = 798068 jobs/min
HPET with patch = 1029445 jobs/min

The perf profile showed a reduction of the %CPU time consumed by
read_hpet from 11.19% without patch to 1.24% with patch.

Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <Waiman.Long@hpe.com>
---
v4->v5:
- Use standard spinlock as suggested by Dave Hensen and simplify
the logic.
- Enable it for x86-64 SMP build only.
- Make it NMI safe.

v3->v4:
- Move hpet_save inside the CONFIG_SMP block to fix a compilation
warning in non-SMP build.

v2->v3:
- Make the hpet optimization the default for SMP configuration. So
no documentation change is needed.
- Remove threshold checking code as it should not be necessary and
can be potentially unsafe.

v1->v2:
- Reduce the CPU threshold to 32.
- Add a kernel parameter to explicitly enable or disable hpet
optimization.
- Change hpet_save.hpet type to u32 to make sure that read & write
is atomic on i386.

arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c | 76 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 76 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c b/arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c
index ed16e58..ad7830d 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/hpet.c
@@ -756,10 +756,86 @@ static void hpet_reserve_msi_timers(struct hpet_data *hd)
/*
* Clock source related code
*/
+#if defined(CONFIG_SMP) && defined(CONFIG_64BIT)
+/*
+ * Reading the HPET counter is a very slow operation. If a large number of
+ * CPUs are trying to access the HPET counter simultaneously, it can cause
+ * massive delay and slow down system performance dramatically. This may
+ * happen when HPET is the default clock source instead of TSC. For a
+ * really large system with hundreds of CPUs, the slowdown may be so
+ * severe that it may actually crash the system because of a NMI watchdog
+ * soft lockup, for example.
+ *
+ * If multiple CPUs are trying to access the HPET counter at the same time,
+ * we don't actually need to read the counter multiple times. Instead, the
+ * other CPUs can use the counter value read by the first CPU in the group.
+ *
+ * This special feature is only enabled on x86-64 systems. It is unlikely
+ * that 32-bit x86 systems will have enough CPUs to require this feature
+ * with its associated locking overhead. And we also need 64-bit atomic
+ * read.
+ *
+ * The lock and the hpet value are stored together and can be read in a
+ * single atomic 64-bit read. It is explicitly assumed that the raw spinlock
+ * size is 32-bit.
+ */
+union hpet_lock {
+ struct {
+ raw_spinlock_t lock;
+ u32 value;
+ };
+ u64 lockval;
+};
+
+static union hpet_lock hpet __cacheline_aligned;
+
+static cycle_t read_hpet(struct clocksource *cs)
+{
+ unsigned long flags;
+ union hpet_lock old, new;
+
+ /*
+ * Read the current state of the lock and HPET value atomically.
+ */
+ old.lockval = READ_ONCE(hpet.lockval);
+
+ if (!raw_spin_is_locked(&old.lock) &&
+ raw_spin_trylock_irqsave(&hpet.lock, flags)) {
+ new.value = hpet_readl(HPET_COUNTER);
+ /*
+ * Use WRITE_ONCE() to prevent store tearing.
+ */
+ WRITE_ONCE(hpet.value, new.value);
+ raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&hpet.lock, flags);
+ return (cycle_t)new.value;
+ }
+
+ /*
+ * Wait until the HPET value change or the lock is free to indicate
+ * its value is up-to-date.
+ *
+ * It is possible that old.value has already contained the latest
+ * HPET value while the lock holder was in the process of releasing
+ * the lock. Checking for lock state change will enable us to return
+ * the value immediately instead of waiting for the next HPET reader
+ * to come along.
+ */
+ do {
+ cpu_relax();
+ new.lockval = READ_ONCE(hpet.lockval);
+ } while ((new.value == old.value) && raw_spin_is_locked(&new.lock));
+
+ return (cycle_t)new.value;
+}
+#else
+/*
+ * For UP or 32-bit.
+ */
static cycle_t read_hpet(struct clocksource *cs)
{
return (cycle_t)hpet_readl(HPET_COUNTER);
}
+#endif

static struct clocksource clocksource_hpet = {
.name = "hpet",
--
1.7.1