Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:33:35 +0200
From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: Joe Korty <joe.korty@ccur.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] make poll_idle behave more like the other idle methods
Message-ID: <20080828133335.GA1126@elte.hu>
References: <20080827143506.GA23166@tsunami.ccur.com> <20080828090036.GC19422@elte.hu> <20080828132237.GA20926@tsunami.ccur.com>
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* Joe Korty <joe.korty@ccur.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 05:00:36AM -0400, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > 
> > * Joe Korty <joe.korty@ccur.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > Make poll_idle() behave more like the other idle methods.
> > >
> > > Currently, poll_idle() returns immediately.  The other
> > > idle methods all wait indefinately for some condition
> > > to come true before returning.  poll_idle should emulate
> > > these other methods and also wait for a return condition,
> > > in this case, for need_resched() to become 'true'.
> > >
> > > Without this delay the idle loop spends all of its time
> > > in the outer loop that calls poll_idle.  This outer loop,
> > > these days, does real work, some of it under rcu locks.
> > > That work should only be done when idle is entered and
> > > when idle exits, not continuously while idle is spinning.
> > 
> > i'm wondering, what's the motivation, have you actually seen
> > anything bad/undesired happen due to that?
> 
> I saw the outer loop running continuously, from the old
> trace patch which I had applied.

ah - was that an older version of ftrace?

> Nowdays the outer loop runs the NO_HZ stuff, which touches
> quite a few memory locations.  Having say two cpus in idle
> and there is potential for cache thrashing to suck up a good
> part of the local memory bus bandwidth.
> 
> And I suspect as time goes on cpu_idle will end up with
> more work to do.

agreed.

	Ingo
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