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From:   Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Date:   Tue, 17 Sep 2019 17:55:29 +0200
Message-ID: <CAKfTPtDRCBBkogYrWtwrZxM-hs=x8HrpK3N1pABDyAAMv8edAw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] x86,sched: Add support for frequency invariance
To:     Giovanni Gherdovich <ggherdovich@suse.cz>
Cc:     Srinivas Pandruvada <srinivas.pandruvada@linux.intel.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>, bp@suse.de,
        "Cc: Len Brown" <lenb@kernel.org>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@rjwysocki.net>, x86@kernel.org,
        "open list:THERMAL" <linux-pm@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>,
        Matt Fleming <matt@codeblueprint.co.uk>,
        viresh kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>,
        Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@redhat.com>,
        Paul Turner <pjt@google.com>, qperret@qperret.net,
        Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@arm.com>
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On Tue, 17 Sep 2019 at 16:21, Giovanni Gherdovich <ggherdovich@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> Hello Srinivas,
>
> On Fri, 2019-09-13 at 15:52 -0700, Srinivas Pandruvada wrote:
> > On Mon, 2019-09-09 at 04:42 +0200, Giovanni Gherdovich wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > > +
> > > +/*
> > > + * APERF/MPERF frequency ratio computation.
> > > + *
> > > + * The scheduler wants to do frequency invariant accounting and
> > > needs a <1
> > > + * ratio to account for the 'current' frequency, corresponding to
> > > + * freq_curr / freq_max.
> >
> > I thought this is no longer the restriction and Vincent did some work
> > to remove this restriction.
>
> If you're referring to the patch
>
>   23127296889f "sched/fair: Update scale invariance of PELT"
>
> merged in v5.2, I'm familiar with that and from my understanding you still
> want a <1 scaling factor. This is my recalling of the patch:
>
> Vincent was studying some synthetic traces and realized that util_avg reported
> by PELT didn't quite match the result you'd get computing the formula with pen
> and paper (theoretical value). To address this he changed where the scaling
> factor is applied in the PELT formula.
>
> At some point when accumulating the PELT sums, you'll have to measure the time
> 'delta' since you last updated PELT. What we have after Vincent's change is
> that this time length 'delta' gets itself scaled by the freq_curr/freq_max
> ratio:
>
>     delta = time since last PELT update
>     delta *= freq_percent
>
> In this way time goes at "wall clock speed" only when you're running at max
> capacitiy, and goes "slower" (from the PELT point of view) if we're running at
> a lower frequency. I don't think Vincent had in mind a faster-than-wall-clock
> PELT time (which you'd get w/ freq_percent>1).

Yes, I haven't really planned to have time going faster that wall
clock but I don't see any algorithm problem at least if that would be
the case.
There will be a reduced maximum delta update of clock pelt but that
will still be large enough

>
> Speaking of which, Srinivas, do you have any opinion and/or requirement about
> this? I confusely remember Peter Zijlstra saying (more than a year ago, now)
> that you would like an unclipped freq_curr/freq_max ratio, and may not be
> happy with this patch clipping it to 1 when freq_curr > 4_cores_turbo. If
> that's the case, could you elaborate on this?
> Ignore that if it doesn't make sense, I may be mis-remembering.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Giovanni