Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:24:16 -0500
From: Dimitri Sivanich <sivanich@sgi.com>
To: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
       john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>,
       Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] Move calc_load call out from xtime_lock protection
Message-ID: <20090411162416.GC3496@sgi.com>
References: <20090410173437.GA23415@sgi.com> <alpine.LFD.2.00.0904110931240.21577@localhost.localdomain>
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On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 11:51:36AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Apr 2009, Dimitri Sivanich wrote:
> 
> > The xtime_lock is being held for long periods on larger systems due
> > to an extensive amount of time being spent in calc_load(),
> > specifically here:
> >   do_timer->update_times->calc_load->count_active_tasks->nr_active()
> > 
> > On a 64 cpu system I've seen this take approximately 55 usec.
> > Presumably it would be worse on larger systems.  This causes other
> > cpus to be held off in places such as
> > scheduler_tick->sched_clock_tick waiting for the xtime_lock to be
> > released.
> 
> I thought more about that. Why don't we move the calc_load() call into
> the timer softirq context and avoid fiddling with all the call sites ?
> Also moving calc_load out of the timer interrupt context reduces the
> interrupts off section as well.
> 
Sounds reasonable to me.
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