![Marcelo Tosatti](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
The cpuidle_haltpoll governor, in conjunction with the haltpoll cpuidle driver, allows guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before halting. This provides the following benefits to host side polling: 1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup. 2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided. The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed even with other runnable tasks in the host. Results comparing halt_poll_ns and server/client application where a small packet is ping-ponged: host --> 31.33 halt_poll_ns=300000 / no guest busy spin --> 33.40 (93.8%) halt_poll_ns=0 / guest_halt_poll_ns=300000 --> 32.73 (95.7%) For the SAP HANA benchmarks (where idle_spin is a parameter of the previous version of the patch, results should be the same): hpns == halt_poll_ns idle_spin=0/ idle_spin=800/ idle_spin=0/ hpns=200000 hpns=0 hpns=800000 DeleteC06T03 (100 thread) 1.76 1.71 (-3%) 1.78 (+1%) InsertC16T02 (100 thread) 2.14 2.07 (-3%) 2.18 (+1.8%) DeleteC00T01 (1 thread) 1.34 1.28 (-4.5%) 1.29 (-3.7%) UpdateC00T03 (1 thread) 4.72 4.18 (-12%) 4.53 (-5%) Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
79 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
79 lines
2.3 KiB
Plaintext
Guest halt polling
|
|
==================
|
|
|
|
The cpuidle_haltpoll driver, with the haltpoll governor, allows
|
|
the guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
|
|
halting.
|
|
This provides the following benefits to host side polling:
|
|
|
|
1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
|
|
a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
|
|
cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.
|
|
|
|
2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.
|
|
|
|
The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
|
|
even with other runnable tasks in the host.
|
|
|
|
The basic logic as follows: A global value, guest_halt_poll_ns,
|
|
is configured by the user, indicating the maximum amount of
|
|
time polling is allowed. This value is fixed.
|
|
|
|
Each vcpu has an adjustable guest_halt_poll_ns
|
|
("per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns"), which is adjusted by the algorithm
|
|
in response to events (explained below).
|
|
|
|
Module Parameters
|
|
=================
|
|
|
|
The haltpoll governor has 5 tunable module parameters:
|
|
|
|
1) guest_halt_poll_ns:
|
|
Maximum amount of time, in nanoseconds, that polling is
|
|
performed before halting.
|
|
|
|
Default: 200000
|
|
|
|
2) guest_halt_poll_shrink:
|
|
Division factor used to shrink per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when
|
|
wakeup event occurs after the global guest_halt_poll_ns.
|
|
|
|
Default: 2
|
|
|
|
3) guest_halt_poll_grow:
|
|
Multiplication factor used to grow per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
|
|
when event occurs after per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
|
|
but before global guest_halt_poll_ns.
|
|
|
|
Default: 2
|
|
|
|
4) guest_halt_poll_grow_start:
|
|
The per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns eventually reaches zero
|
|
in case of an idle system. This value sets the initial
|
|
per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when growing. This can
|
|
be increased from 10000, to avoid misses during the initial
|
|
growth stage:
|
|
|
|
10k, 20k, 40k, ... (example assumes guest_halt_poll_grow=2).
|
|
|
|
Default: 50000
|
|
|
|
5) guest_halt_poll_allow_shrink:
|
|
|
|
Bool parameter which allows shrinking. Set to N
|
|
to avoid it (per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns will remain
|
|
high once achieves global guest_halt_poll_ns value).
|
|
|
|
Default: Y
|
|
|
|
The module parameters can be set from the debugfs files in:
|
|
|
|
/sys/module/haltpoll/parameters/
|
|
|
|
Further Notes
|
|
=============
|
|
|
|
- Care should be taken when setting the guest_halt_poll_ns parameter as a
|
|
large value has the potential to drive the cpu usage to 100% on a machine which
|
|
would be almost entirely idle otherwise.
|