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Date:   Sat, 24 Aug 2019 13:16:05 +0800
From:   Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>
To:     Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
Cc:     Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>,
        Rong Chen <rong.a.chen@intel.com>, michel@daenzer.net,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        dri-devel <dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org>,
        ying.huang@intel.com, lkp@01.org
Subject: Re: [LKP] [drm/mgag200] 90f479ae51: vm-scalability.median -18.8%
 regression
Message-ID: <20190824051605.GA63850@shbuild999.sh.intel.com>
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Hi Thomas,

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 07:25:11PM +0200, Thomas Zimmermann wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I was traveling and could reply earlier. Sorry for taking so long.

No problem! I guessed so :)

> 
> Am 13.08.19 um 11:36 schrieb Feng Tang:
> > Hi Thomas, 
> > 
> > On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 03:25:45PM +0800, Feng Tang wrote:
> >> Hi Thomas,
> >>
> >> On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 04:12:29PM +0800, Rong Chen wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>>>> Actually we run the benchmark as a background process, do we need to
> >>>>> disable the cursor and test again?
> >>>> There's a worker thread that updates the display from the shadow buffer.
> >>>> The blinking cursor periodically triggers the worker thread, but the
> >>>> actual update is just the size of one character.
> >>>>
> >>>> The point of the test without output is to see if the regression comes
> >>> >from the buffer update (i.e., the memcpy from shadow buffer to VRAM), or
> >>> >from the worker thread. If the regression goes away after disabling the
> >>>> blinking cursor, then the worker thread is the problem. If it already
> >>>> goes away if there's simply no output from the test, the screen update
> >>>> is the problem. On my machine I have to disable the blinking cursor, so
> >>>> I think the worker causes the performance drop.
> >>>
> >>> We disabled redirecting stdout/stderr to /dev/kmsg,  and the regression is
> >>> gone.
> >>>
> >>> commit:
> >>>   f1f8555dfb9 drm/bochs: Use shadow buffer for bochs framebuffer console
> >>>   90f479ae51a drm/mgag200: Replace struct mga_fbdev with generic framebuffer
> >>> emulation
> >>>
> >>> f1f8555dfb9a70a2  90f479ae51afa45efab97afdde testcase/testparams/testbox
> >>> ----------------  -------------------------- ---------------------------
> >>>          %stddev      change         %stddev
> >>>              \          |                \
> >>>      43785                       44481
> >>> vm-scalability/300s-8T-anon-cow-seq-hugetlb/lkp-knm01
> >>>      43785                       44481        GEO-MEAN vm-scalability.median
> >>
> >> Till now, from Rong's tests:
> >> 1. Disabling cursor blinking doesn't cure the regression.
> >> 2. Disabling printint test results to console can workaround the
> >> regression.
> >>
> >> Also if we set the perfer_shadown to 0, the regression is also
> >> gone.
> > 
> > We also did some further break down for the time consumed by the
> > new code.
> > 
> > The drm_fb_helper_dirty_work() calls sequentially 
> > 1. drm_client_buffer_vmap	  (290 us)
> > 2. drm_fb_helper_dirty_blit_real  (19240 us)
> > 3. helper->fb->funcs->dirty()    ---> NULL for mgag200 driver
> > 4. drm_client_buffer_vunmap       (215 us)
> >
> 
> It's somewhat different to what I observed, but maybe I just couldn't
> reproduce the problem correctly.
> 
> > The average run time is listed after the function names.
> > 
> > From it, we can see drm_fb_helper_dirty_blit_real() takes too long
> > time (about 20ms for each run). I guess this is the root cause
> > of this regression, as the original code doesn't use this dirty worker.
> 
> True, the original code uses a temporary buffer, but updates the display
> immediately.
> 
> My guess is that this could be a caching problem. The worker runs on a
> different CPU, which doesn't have the shadow buffer in cache.

Yes, that's my thought too. I profiled the working set size, for most of
the drm_fb_helper_dirty_blit_real(), it will update a buffer 4096x768(3 MB),
and as it is called 30~40 times per second, it surely will affect the cache.


> > As said in last email, setting the prefer_shadow to 0 can avoid
> > the regrssion. Could it be an option?
> 
> Unfortunately not. Without the shadow buffer, the console's display
> buffer permanently resides in video memory. It consumes significant
> amount of that memory (say 8 MiB out of 16 MiB). That doesn't leave
> enough room for anything else.
> 
> The best option is to not print to the console.

Do we have other options here?

My thought is this is clearly a regression, that the old driver works
fine, while the new version in linux-next doesn't. Also for a frame
buffer console, writting dozens line of message to it is not a rare
user case. We have many test platforms (servers/desktops/laptops)
with different kinds of GFX hardwares, and this model works fine for
many years :)

Thanks,
Feng


> Best regards
> Thomas
> 
> > Thanks,
> > Feng
> > 
> >>
> >> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_main.c
> >> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/mgag200/mgag200_main.c
> >> @@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ int mgag200_driver_load(struct drm_device *dev, unsigned long flags)
> >>  		dev->mode_config.preferred_depth = 16;
> >>  	else
> >>  		dev->mode_config.preferred_depth = 32;
> >> -	dev->mode_config.prefer_shadow = 1;
> >> +	dev->mode_config.prefer_shadow = 0;
> >>
> >> And from the perf data, one obvious difference is good case don't
> >> call drm_fb_helper_dirty_work(), while bad case calls.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Feng
> >>
> >>> Best Regards,
> >>> Rong Chen
> > _______________________________________________
> > dri-devel mailing list
> > dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org
> > https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Thomas Zimmermann
> Graphics Driver Developer
> SUSE Linux GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
> GF: Felix Imendörffer, Mary Higgins, Sri Rasiah
> HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)
>