Energy-aware scheduling is only meant to be active while the system is
_not_ over-utilized. That is, there are spare cycles available to shift
tasks around based on their actual utilization to get a more
energy-efficient task distribution without depriving any tasks. When
above the tipping point task placement is done the traditional way based
on load_avg, spreading the tasks across as many cpus as possible based
on priority scaled load to preserve smp_nice. Below the tipping point we
want to use util_avg instead. We need to define a criteria for when we
make the switch.
The util_avg for each cpu converges towards 100% (1024) regardless of
how many task additional task we may put on it. If we define
over-utilized as:
sum_{cpus}(rq.cfs.avg.util_avg) + margin > sum_{cpus}(rq.capacity)
some individual cpus may be over-utilized running multiple tasks even
when the above condition is false. That should be okay as long as we try
to spread the tasks out to avoid per-cpu over-utilization as much as
possible and if all tasks have the _same_ priority. If the latter isn't
true, we have to consider priority to preserve smp_nice.
For example, we could have n_cpus nice=-10 util_avg=55% tasks and
n_cpus/2 nice=0 util_avg=60% tasks. Balancing based on util_avg we are
likely to end up with nice=-10 tasks sharing cpus and nice=0 tasks
getting their own as we 1.5*n_cpus tasks in total and 55%+55% is less
over-utilized than 55%+60% for those cpus that have to be shared. The
system utilization is only 85% of the system capacity, but we are
breaking smp_nice.
To be sure not to break smp_nice, we have defined over-utilization
conservatively as when any cpu in the system is fully utilized at it's
highest frequency instead:
cpu_rq(any).cfs.avg.util_avg + margin > cpu_rq(any).capacity
IOW, as soon as one cpu is (nearly) 100% utilized, we switch to load_avg
to factor in priority to preserve smp_nice.
With this definition, we can skip periodic load-balance as no cpu has an
always-running task when the system is not over-utilized. All tasks will
be periodic and we can balance them at wake-up. This conservative
condition does however mean that some scenarios that could benefit from
energy-aware decisions even if one cpu is fully utilized would not get
those benefits.
For system where some cpus might have reduced capacity on some cpus
(RT-pressure and/or big.LITTLE), we want periodic load-balance checks as
soon a just a single cpu is fully utilized as it might one of those with
reduced capacity and in that case we want to migrate it.
cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Morten Rasmussen <morten.rasmussen@arm.com>
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