Re: [RESEND PATCH v13 0/9] timers: Exclude isolated cpus from timer migration

Waiman Long
2025-10-30T16:37:18Z

On 10/30/25 12:09 PM, Gabriele Monaco wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2025-10-30 at 11:37 -0400, Waiman Long wrote:
>>
>> On 10/30/25 10:12 AM, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Waiman,
>>>
>>> Le Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 10:56:06PM -0400, Waiman Long a écrit :
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 10/20/25 7:27 AM, Gabriele Monaco wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The timer migration mechanism allows active CPUs to pull timers from
>>>>> idle ones to improve the overall idle time. This is however undesired
>>>>> when CPU intensive workloads run on isolated cores, as the algorithm
>>>>> would move the timers from housekeeping to isolated cores, negatively
>>>>> affecting the isolation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Exclude isolated cores from the timer migration algorithm, extend the
>>>>> concept of unavailable cores, currently used for offline ones, to
>>>>> isolated ones:
>>>>> * A core is unavailable if isolated or offline;
>>>>> * A core is available if non isolated and online;
>>>>>
>>>>> A core is considered unavailable as isolated if it belongs to:
>>>>> * the isolcpus (domain) list
>>>>> * an isolated cpuset
>>>>> Except if it is:
>>>>> * in the nohz_full list (already idle for the hierarchy)
>>>>> * the nohz timekeeper core (must be available to handle global timers)
>>>>>
>>>>> CPUs are added to the hierarchy during late boot, excluding isolated
>>>>> ones, the hierarchy is also adapted when the cpuset isolation changes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Due to how the timer migration algorithm works, any CPU part of the
>>>>> hierarchy can have their global timers pulled by remote CPUs and have to
>>>>> pull remote timers, only skipping pulling remote timers would break the
>>>>> logic.
>>>>> For this reason, prevent isolated CPUs from pulling remote global
>>>>> timers, but also the other way around: any global timer started on an
>>>>> isolated CPU will run there. This does not break the concept of
>>>>> isolation (global timers don't come from outside the CPU) and, if
>>>>> considered inappropriate, can usually be mitigated with other isolation
>>>>> techniques (e.g. IRQ pinning).
>>>>>
>>>>> This effect was noticed on a 128 cores machine running oslat on the
>>>>> isolated cores (1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127). The tool monopolises CPUs,
>>>>> and the CPU with lowest count in a timer migration hierarchy (here 1
>>>>> and 65) appears as always active and continuously pulls global timers,
>>>>> from the housekeeping CPUs. This ends up moving driver work (e.g.
>>>>> delayed work) to isolated CPUs and causes latency spikes:
>>>>>
>>>>> before the change:
>>>>>
>>>>>   # oslat -c 1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127 -D 62s
>>>>>   ...
>>>>>    Maximum: 1203 10 3 4 ... 5 (us)
>>>>>
>>>>> after the change:
>>>>>
>>>>>   # oslat -c 1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127 -D 62s
>>>>>   ...
>>>>>    Maximum: 10 4 3 4 3 ... 5 (us)
>>>>>
>>>>> The same behaviour was observed on a machine with as few as 20 cores /
>>>>> 40 threads with isocpus set to: 1-9,11-39 with rtla-osnoise-top.
>>>>>
>>>>> The first 5 patches are preparatory work to change the concept of
>>>>> online/offline to available/unavailable, keep track of those in a
>>>>> separate cpumask cleanup the setting/clearing functions and change a
>>>>> function name in cpuset code.
>>>>>
>>>>> Patch 6 and 7 adapt isolation and cpuset to prevent domain isolated and
>>>>> nohz_full from covering all CPUs not leaving any housekeeping one. This
>>>>> can lead to problems with the changes introduced in this series because
>>>>> no CPU would remain to handle global timers.
>>>>>
>>>>> Patch 9 extends the unavailable status to domain isolated CPUs, which
>>>>> is the main contribution of the series.
>>>>>
>>>>> This series is equivalent to v13 but rebased on v6.18-rc2.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thomas,
>>>>
>>>> This patch series have undergone multiple round of reviews. Do you think
>>>> it
>>>> is good enough to be merged into tip?
>>>>
>>>> It does contain some cpuset code, but most of the changes are in the timer
>>>> code. So I think it is better to go through the tip tree. It does have
>>>> some
>>>> minor conflicts with the current for-6.19 branch of the cgroup tree, but
>>>> it
>>>> can be easily resolved during merge.
>>>>
>>>> What do you think?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Just wait a little, I realize I made a buggy suggestion to Gabriele and
>>> a detail needs to be fixed.
>>>
>>> My bad...
>>>
>>
>> OK, I thought you were OK with the timer changes. I guess Gabriele will have
>> to send out a new version to address your finding.
> Sure, I'm going to have a look at this next week and send a V14.

I am going to extract out your 2 cpuset patches and send them to the
cgroup mailing list separately. So you don't need to include them in
your next version.

Cheers,
Longman