Re: [patch 7/8] hrtimer: Avoid unnecessary SMP function calls in clock_was_set()

Thomas Gleixner
2021-05-15T00:24:59Z

On Sat, May 15 2021 at 01:28, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 08:52:33PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> On Thu, May 13 2021 at 16:59, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> > On Tue, Apr 27, 2021 at 10:25:44AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>> >> - /* Retrigger the CPU local events everywhere */
>> >> - on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 1);
>> >> + if (!zalloc_cpumask_var(&mask, GFP_KERNEL)) {
>> >> + on_each_cpu(retrigger_next_event, NULL, 1);
>> >
>> > This will violate NOHZ_FULL;
>>
>> Only if that allocation fails.
>
> Right, which should be near to never I suppose.
>
>> Aside of that any CPU which has an affected timer will get notified even
>> on NOHZ_FULL.
>
> Right; but if it's properly NOHZ_FULL -- the kind that wanted a signal
> on any entry into the kernel -- when it won't have timers and this IPI
> will trigger the signal and kill the program.

That's true today. clock_was_set() IPI's unconditionally. The whole
point of this exercise is to avoid that if there are no armed timers on
the affected clocks.

>> >> + preempt_disable();
>> >> + smp_call_function_many(mask, retrigger_next_event, NULL, 1);
>> >
>> > The sane option is:
>> >
>> > smp_call_function_many_cond(cpu_online_mask, retrigger_next_event,
>> > NULL, SCF_WAIT, update_needs_ipi);
>> >
>> > Which does all of the above, but better.
>>
>> With the difference that the for_each_cpu() loop runs with preemption
>> disabled, while with this approach preemption is only disabled accross
>> the function call.
>
> Yeah, I'd forgotten that... I might put looking at that on the todo list
> somewhere :/

That's this append only thingy, right?

Thanks,

tglx