Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:59:09 +0530
From: Vaidyanathan Srinivasan <svaidy@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: Salman Qazi <sqazi@google.com>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       linux-pm@lists.linux-foundation.org,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
       Michael Rubin <mrubin@google.com>, Taliver Heath <taliver@google.com>
Subject: Re: RFC: A proposal for power capping through forced idle in the
 Linux Kernel
Message-ID: <20091215102909.GA878@dirshya.in.ibm.com>
Reply-To: svaidy@linux.vnet.ibm.com
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* Salman Qazi <sqazi@google.com> [2009-12-14 16:36:20]:

> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:11:47 -0800
> > Salman Qazi <sqazi@google.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I like the general idea, I have one request (that I didn't see quite in
> > your explanation): Please make sure that all cpus in the system do
> > their idle injection at the same time, so that memory can go into power
> > saving mode as well during this time etc etc...
> >

The value of the overall idea is well understood but the
implementation and benefits in terms of power savings was the major
point of discussion earlier. 
 
> With the current interface, the forced idle percentages on the CPUs
> are controlled independently.  There's a trade-off here.  If we inject
> idle cycles on all the CPU at the same time, our machine
> responsiveness also degrades: essentially every CPU becomes equally
> bad for an interactive task to run on.  Our aim at the moment is to
> try to concentrate the idle cycles on a small set of CPUs, to strive
> to leave some CPUs where interactive tasks can run unhindered.  But,
> given a different workload and goals the correct policy may be
> different.
> 
> Simultaneously idling multiple "cores" becomes necessary in the SMT
> case: as there is no point in idling a single thread, while the other
> thread is running full tilt.  So, in such a case it is necessary to
> idle all the threads making up the physical core.  This feature has
> not been implemented yet.
> 
> I think the best approach may be to provide a way to specify the
> policy from the user space.  Basically let the user decide at what
> level of CPU hierarchy the forced idle percentages are specified.
> Then, in the levels below, we simply inject at the same time.

Synchronising the idle times across multiple cores and also selecting
sibling threads belonging to the same core is important.  The current
ACPI forced idle driver can inject idle time but not synchronized
across multiple cores.

Allowing the scheduler load balancer to avoid using a part of the
sched domain tree will allow easy grouping of sibling threads and
sibling cores if that saves more power.

However as Arjan mentioned, new architectures have significant power
savings at full system idle where memory power is reduced.  Injecting
idle time in any of the core will actually increase the utilisation on
the other cores (unless the system is full loaded) and reduce the full
system idle time opportunity.  Basically injecting idle time on some
of the cores in the system goes against the race-to-idle policy
thereby decreasing overall system operating efficiency.

Can you please clarify the following questions:

* What is the typical duration of idle time injected?
        - 10s of milli seconds?  CPUs are expected to goto lowest
          power idle state within this time?

* You mentioned that natural idle time in the system is taken into
  account before injecting forced idle time, which is a good feature
  to have.
        - In most workloads, as the utilisation drops, all the cpus
          have similar idle times.  This is favourable for exploiting
          memory power saving.  
        - Now when more idle time need to be inserted, is it
          uniformly spread across all CPUs?

Suggestions:

* Can cgroup hardlimits help here to inject idle times
  http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/11/17/191

  The problem of distributing idle time equally across CPUs and
  relating sibling threads is still and issue, but can be worked out.
  As of now hardlimits can distribute idle time across CPUs thereby
  enabling full system idle.

--Vaidy
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