[tip:,sched/core] sched/timers: Explain why idle task schedules out on remote timer enqueue
Commit Message
The following commit has been merged into the sched/core branch of tip:
Commit-ID: 194600008d5c43b5a4ba98c4b81633397e34ffad
Gitweb: https://git.kernel.org/tip/194600008d5c43b5a4ba98c4b81633397e34ffad
Author: Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>
AuthorDate: Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:38:40 -05:00
Committer: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
CommitterDate: Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:57:52 +01:00
sched/timers: Explain why idle task schedules out on remote timer enqueue
Trying to avoid that didn't bring much value after testing, add comment
about this.
Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Acked-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael@kernel.org>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231114193840.4041-3-frederic@kernel.org
---
kernel/sched/core.c | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 22 insertions(+)
@@ -1131,6 +1131,28 @@ static void wake_up_idle_cpu(int cpu)
if (cpu == smp_processor_id())
return;
+ /*
+ * Set TIF_NEED_RESCHED and send an IPI if in the non-polling
+ * part of the idle loop. This forces an exit from the idle loop
+ * and a round trip to schedule(). Now this could be optimized
+ * because a simple new idle loop iteration is enough to
+ * re-evaluate the next tick. Provided some re-ordering of tick
+ * nohz functions that would need to follow TIF_NR_POLLING
+ * clearing:
+ *
+ * - On most archs, a simple fetch_or on ti::flags with a
+ * "0" value would be enough to know if an IPI needs to be sent.
+ *
+ * - x86 needs to perform a last need_resched() check between
+ * monitor and mwait which doesn't take timers into account.
+ * There a dedicated TIF_TIMER flag would be required to
+ * fetch_or here and be checked along with TIF_NEED_RESCHED
+ * before mwait().
+ *
+ * However, remote timer enqueue is not such a frequent event
+ * and testing of the above solutions didn't appear to report
+ * much benefits.
+ */
if (set_nr_and_not_polling(rq->idle))
smp_send_reschedule(cpu);
else