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From:   "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>
Date:   Fri, 10 Aug 2018 09:22:10 +0200
Message-ID: <CAJZ5v0iyGFFDO83KGcET9a+UpPCDQ=_sxZeGxuG6fL4O+hcw+w@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RESEND PATCH v1 1/2] cpuidle: menu: Correct the criteria for
 stopping tick
To:     Leo Yan <leo.yan@linaro.org>
Cc:     "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>,
        "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@linaro.org>,
        Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Linux PM <linux-pm@vger.kernel.org>
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On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 9:13 AM,  <leo.yan@linaro.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 10:47:17PM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 7:20 PM, Leo Yan <leo.yan@linaro.org> wrote:

[cut]

>> And that will cause the tick to be stopped unnecessarily in certain
>> situations, so why is this better?
>
> Let's see below two cases, the first one case we configure
> TICK_USEC=1000 (1ms) and the second case we configure TICK_USEC=4000
> (4ms).
>
> Let's assume we do the testing one the same platform and have two runs,
> in the Case 1 we configure HZ=1000 so TICK_USEC=1ms, expected_interval
> is 3ms and deepest idle state target residency is 2ms, finally the idle
> governor will choose the deepest state and skip to calibrate to shallow
> state caused by 'expected_interval' > TICK_USEC;
>
> In the Case 2 we configure HZ=250 so TICK_USE=4ms, expected_interval
> (3ms) and deepest idle state target residency (2ms) are same with the
> Case 1; but because expected_interval < TICK_USEC so the idle governor
> will do calibration to select a shallower state.  If we image on one
> platform, the deepest idle state's target residency is smaller value,
> then it has bigger gap with TICK_USEC, the deepest idle state is harder
> to be selected due 'expected_interval' can be easily hit the range
> [Deepest target residency..TICK_USEC).
>
> This patch has no any change for Case 1 and it wants to optimize for
> Case 2 so Case 2 has chance to stay in deepest idle state.  I
> understand from the performance pespective, we need to avoid to stop
> tick for shallow states; on the other hand we cannot prevent CPU run
> into deepest idle state just only we want to keep the tick running,
> especially the expected interval is longer than the deepest state
> target residency.
>
> Case 1:
>       Deepest idle state's target residency=2ms
>                      |
>                      V
> |--------------------------------------------------------> time (ms)
>       ^                              ^
>       |                              |
> TICK_USEC=1ms           expected_interval=3ms
>
>
> Case 2:
>       Deepest idle state's target residency = 2ms
>                      |
>                      V
> |--------------------------------------------------------> time (ms)
>                                      ^                  ^
>                                      |                  |
>                           expected_interval = 3ms   TICK_USEC = 4ms
>
>
>
>> >                 unsigned int delta_next_us = ktime_to_us(delta_next);
>> >
>> >                 *stop_tick = false;
>> > --

Well, I don't quite agree with the approach here, then.

As I said in the previous reply, IMO restarting the stopped tick
before leaving the loop in do_idle() is pointless overhead.  It is not
necessary to do that to avoid leaving CPUs in shallow idle states for
too long (I'll send an alternative patch to fix this issue shortly).

While you may think that pointless overhead is not a problem, I don't
quite agree with that.