Message-ID: <1437234536.3452.71.camel@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC] workqueue: avoiding unbounded wq on isolated CPUs by
 default
From: Mike Galbraith <umgwanakikbuti@gmail.com>
To: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>, Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@redhat.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Lai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@gmail.com>, Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>,
        "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" <lclaudio@uudg.org>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2015 17:48:56 +0200
In-Reply-To: <20150718133602.GA3041@lerouge>
References: <9e53de7c91c885ee255e16ee25f401d9eedf08d9.1437067317.git.bristot@redhat.com>
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	 <1437107190.3438.23.camel@gmail.com>
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	 <1437153348.5860.32.camel@gmail.com> <20150718133602.GA3041@lerouge>
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On Sat, 2015-07-18 at 15:36 +0200, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 07:15:48PM +0200, Mike Galbraith wrote:
> > On Fri, 2015-07-17 at 11:27 -0400, Tejun Heo wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm just curious whether there was any specific reason we didn't do
> > > this before (ISTR people discussing it back then too).
> > 
> > I'm dead set against all this auto-presume nonsense fwtw  Allocating a
> > pool of no_hz_full _capable_ CPUs should not entice the kernel to make
> > any rash assumptions.  Let users do the button poking, they know what
> > they want, and when they want it.
> 
> We need to make a choice then. Either we do all the affinity tuning from
> userspace with a common tool, which is what I had wished before everybody
> asked for pre-settings.

Giving userspace what they need to do what they want seems right to me.

> Or we do it in the kernel, now we should define some kind of CONFIG_ISOLATION
> to make that proper and rule the various kinds of isolation people are
> interested in.
> 
> But we can't leave it half-way like it is currently with everything preset on
> top of nohz: rcu nocb mask, watchdog mask, cpu_isolation_map and exclude workqueue.

Yeah.  Hell, maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe people really want this rigidity
and hand-holding by the kernel, but it just seems dainbramaged to me.
ATM, you pay a high price (the overhead) for the capability, but until
that auto-assume isolcpus landed, those CPUs weren't forever more
specialists, they were CPUs with an extra (costly) capability, could be
disconnected/reconnected to load balancing on the fly, and used however
the user saw fit.

I can imagine an auto-everything kernel having a bit of trouble with an
SGI beast from hell.  Too bad I don't have access to one, I'd try to
boot a tune for maximum hand holding kernel.

	-Mike

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