Messages in this thread | | | From | Ivan Babrou <> | Date | Thu, 16 Jan 2020 12:24:47 -0800 | Subject | Re: Lower than expected CPU pressure in PSI |
| |
This definitely helps! It would be nice to add this as a section here:
* https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/accounting/psi.html
On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 8:55 AM Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> wrote: > > On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 11:28:32AM -0800, Ivan Babrou wrote: > > I applied the patch on top of 5.5.0-rc3 and it's definitely better > > now, both competing cgroups report 500ms/s delay. Feel free to add > > Tested-by from me. > > Thanks, Ivan! > > > I'm still seeing /unified/system.slice at 385ms/s and /unified.slice > > at 372ms/s, do you have an explanation for that part? Maybe it's > > totally reasonable, but warrants a patch for documentation. > > Yes, this is a combination of CPU pinning and how pressure is > calculated in SMP systems. > > The stall times are defined as lost compute potential - which scales > with the number of concurrent threads - normalized to wallclock > time. See the "Multiple CPUs" section in kernel/sched/psi.c. > > By restricting the CPUs in system.slice, there is less compute > available in that group than in the parent, which means that the > relative loss of potential can be higher. > > It's a bit unintuitive because most cgroup metrics are plain numbers > that add up to bigger numbers as you go up the tree. If we exported > both the numerator (waste) and denominator (compute potential) here, > the numbers would act more conventionally, with parent numbers always > bigger than the child's. But because pressure is normalized to > wallclock time, you only see the ratio at each level, and that can > shrink as you go up the tree if lower levels are CPU-constrained. > > We could have exported both numbers, but for most usecases that would > be more confusing than helpful. And in practice it's the ratio that > really matters: the pressure in the leaf cgroups is high due to the > CPU restriction; but when you go higher up the tree and look at not > just the pinned tasks, but also include tasks in other groups that > have more CPUs available to them, the aggregate productivity at that > level *is* actually higher. > > I hope that helps!
| |