Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758287AbcCCQyo (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Mar 2016 11:54:44 -0500 Received: from foss.arm.com ([217.140.101.70]:38470 "EHLO foss.arm.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756330AbcCCQyl (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Mar 2016 11:54:41 -0500 Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 16:55:44 +0000 From: Juri Lelli To: Peter Zijlstra Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" , Vincent Guittot , "Rafael J. Wysocki" , Linux PM list , Steve Muckle , ACPI Devel Maling List , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Srinivas Pandruvada , Viresh Kumar , Michael Turquette Subject: Re: [PATCH 6/6] cpufreq: schedutil: New governor based on scheduler utilization data Message-ID: <20160303165544.GY18792@e106622-lin> References: <2495375.dFbdlAZmA6@vostro.rjw.lan> <1842158.0Xhak3Uaac@vostro.rjw.lan> <20160303122030.GN6356@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> <20160303163735.GS6356@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20160303163735.GS6356@twins.programming.kicks-ass.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2986 Lines: 68 On 03/03/16 17:37, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > On Thu, Mar 03, 2016 at 05:24:32PM +0100, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 1:20 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > > On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 11:49:48PM +0100, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > > >> >>> + min_f = sg_policy->policy->cpuinfo.min_freq; > > >> >>> + max_f = sg_policy->policy->cpuinfo.max_freq; > > >> >>> + next_f = util > max ? max_f : min_f + util * (max_f - min_f) / max; > > > > > >> In case a more formal derivation of this formula is needed, it is > > >> based on the following 3 assumptions: > > >> > > >> (1) Performance is a linear function of frequency. > > >> (2) Required performance is a linear function of the utilization ratio > > >> x = util/max as provided by the scheduler (0 <= x <= 1). > > > > > >> (3) The minimum possible frequency (min_freq) corresponds to x = 0 and > > >> the maximum possible frequency (max_freq) corresponds to x = 1. > > >> > > >> (1) and (2) combined imply that > > >> > > >> f = a * x + b > > >> > > >> (f - frequency, a, b - constants to be determined) and then (3) quite > > >> trivially leads to b = min_freq and a = max_freq - min_freq. > > > > > > 3 is the problem, that just doesn't make sense and is probably the > > > reason why you see very little selection of the min freq. > > > > It is about mapping the entire [0,1] interval to the available frequency range. > > Yeah, but I don't see why that makes sense.. > > > I till overprovision things (the smaller x the more), but then it may > > help the race-to-idle a bit in theory. > > So, since we also have the cpuidle information, could we not make a > better guess at race-to-idle? > > > > Suppose a machine with the following frequencies: > > > > > > 500, 750, 1000 > > > > > > And a utilization of 0.4, how does asking for 500 + 0.4 * (1000-500) = > > > 700 make any sense? Per your point 1, it should should be asking for > > > 0.4 * 1000 = 400. > > > > > > Because, per 1, at 500 it runs exactly half as fast as at 1000, and we > > > only need 0.4 times as much. Therefore 500 is more than sufficient. > > > > OK, but then I don't see why this reasoning only applies to the lower > > bound of the frequency range. Is there any reason why x = 1 should be > > the only point mapping to max_freq? > > Well, everything that goes over the second to last freq would end up at > the last (max) freq. > > Take again the 500,750,1000 example, everything that's >750 would end up > at 1000 (for relation_l, >875 for _c). > > But given the platform's cpuidle information, maybe coupled with an avg > idle est, we can compute the benefit of race-to-idle and over provision > based on that, right? > Shouldn't this kind of considerations be a scheduler thing? I'm not really getting why we want to put more "intelligence" in a new governor. Also, if I understand Ingo's point correctly, I think we want to make this kind of policy decisions inside the scheduler.