To support task performance boosting, the usage of a single knob has the
advantage to be a simple solution, both from the implementation and the
usability standpoint. However, on a real system it can be difficult to
identify a single value for the knob which fits the needs of multiple
different tasks. For example, some kernel threads and/or user-space
background services should be better managed the "standard" way while we
still want to be able to boost the performance of specific workloads.
In order to improve the flexibility of the task boosting mechanism this
patch is the first of a small series which extends the previous
implementation to introduce a "per task group" support.
This first patch introduces just the basic CGroups support, a new
"schedtune" CGroups controller is added which allows to configure
different boost value for different groups of tasks.
To keep the implementation simple but still effective for a boosting
strategy, the new controller:
1. allows only a two layer hierarchy
2. supports only a limited number of boost groups
A two layer hierarchy allows to place each task either:
a) in the root control group
thus being subject to a system-wide boosting value
b) in a child of the root group
thus being subject to the specific boost value defined by that
"boost group"
The limited number of "boost groups" supported is mainly motivated by
the observation that in a real system it could be useful to have only
few classes of tasks which deserve different treatment.
For example, background vs foreground or interactive vs low-priority.
As an additional benefit, a limited number of boost groups allows also
to have a simpler implementation especially for the code required to
compute the boost value for CPUs which have runnable tasks belonging to
different boost groups.
cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
cc: Li Zefan <lizefan@huawei.com>
cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Patrick Bellasi <patrick.bellasi@arm.com>
The current (CFS) scheduler implementation does not allow "to boost"
tasks performance by running them at a higher OPP compared to the
minimum required to meet their workload demands.
To support tasks performance boosting the scheduler should provide a
"knob" which allows to tune how much the system is going to be optimised
for energy efficiency vs performance.
This patch is the first of a series which provides a simple interface to
define a tuning knob. One system-wide "boost" tunable is exposed via:
/proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_boost
which can be configured in the range [0..100], to define a percentage
where:
- 0% boost requires to operate in "standard" mode by scheduling
tasks at the minimum capacities required by the workload demand
- 100% boost requires to push at maximum the task performances,
"regardless" of the incurred energy consumption
A boost value in between these two boundaries is used to bias the
power/performance trade-off, the higher the boost value the more the
scheduler is biased toward performance boosting instead of energy
efficiency.
cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Patrick Bellasi <patrick.bellasi@arm.com>
