Messages in this thread | | | From | Don Zickus <> | Subject | [PATCH 0/5] softlockup, sched: convert softlockup to real-time timestamping | Date | Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:17:40 -0500 |
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Currently, the touch_softlockup_watchdog code just delays the setting of the timestamp until the timer thread is run. This causes the softlockup timer to be unarmed for a brief period until the timer runs and re-arms the watchdog.
It seems some workloads are affected by this, namely Anton's test code that disables interrupts and idles the cpu on ppc. By switching to a model where we timestamp as soon as we are called in touch_softlockup_watchdog(), we can trigger a little sooner and in more cases.
The flip side, is there is some extra overhead to calculating the time at the touch. Normally this shouldn't be an issue, because most cases, any code touching the watchdog already believes it is in a slow path. This is not true for the scheduler.
The scheduler at any time can take large jumps of time (ie suspend/resume, kgdb, virt guest pause/restart) and therefore needs to touch the watchdog to prevent from falsely firing at almost every tick.
I noticed that the touch_softlockup_watchdog was being called very frequently in the scheduler. So the first two patches are an attempt to minimize them from being called a million times/sec to zero under normal circumstances.
The last patch removes a long standing hack that should be satisified with the new changes (untested though).
I tested these patches through suspend/resume, a kvm guest and using lkdtm (softlockup). Everything seems to work as it did before.
Anton Blanchard (2): watchdog: Remove touch_all_softlockup_watchdogs watchdog: Softlockup has regular windows where it is not armed
Don Zickus (3): sched: Minimize the number of touch_softlockup_watchdogs time: Minimize number of touch_softlockup_watchdog kgdb, softlockup: Remove touch_softlockup_watchdog_sync
include/linux/sched.h | 8 -------- kernel/debug/debug_core.c | 2 +- kernel/sched/clock.c | 3 ++- kernel/sched/core.c | 2 +- kernel/time/tick-sched.c | 7 ++----- kernel/watchdog.c | 37 ++----------------------------------- 6 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 51 deletions(-)
-- 1.7.7.4
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