Re: [RFC 00/60] Coscheduling for Linux

[Nishanth Aravamudan <naravamudan@digitalocean.com>]

On 17.09.2018 [13:33:15 +0200], Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 06:25:44PM +0200, Jan H. Schönherr wrote:
> > On 09/14/2018 01:12 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 11:39:47PM +0200, Jan H. Schönherr wrote:
> 
> > >> B) Why would I want this?
> > > 
> > >>    In the L1TF context, it prevents other applications from
> > >>    loading additional data into the L1 cache, while one
> > >>    application tries to leak data.
> > > 
> > > That is the whole and only reason you did this;
> > It really isn't. But as your mind seems made up, I'm not going to
> > bother to argue.
> 
> > >> D) What can I *not* do with this?
> > >> ---------------------------------
> > >>
> > >> Besides the missing load-balancing within coscheduled
> > >> task-groups, this implementation has the following properties,
> > >> which might be considered short-comings.
> > >>
> > >> This particular implementation focuses on SCHED_OTHER tasks
> > >> managed by CFS and allows coscheduling them. Interrupts as well
> > >> as tasks in higher scheduling classes are currently out-of-scope:
> > >> they are assumed to be negligible interruptions as far as
> > >> coscheduling is concerned and they do *not* cause a preemption of
> > >> a whole group. This implementation could be extended to cover
> > >> higher scheduling classes. Interrupts, however, are an orthogonal
> > >> issue.
> > >>
> > >> The collective context switch from one coscheduled set of tasks
> > >> to another -- while fast -- is not atomic. If a use-case needs
> > >> the absolute guarantee that all tasks of the previous set have
> > >> stopped executing before any task of the next set starts
> > >> executing, an additional hand-shake/barrier needs to be added.
> > > 
> > > IOW it's completely friggin useless for L1TF.
> > 
> > Do you believe me now, that L1TF is not "the whole and only reason"
> > I did this? :D
> 
> You did mention this work first to me in the context of L1TF, so I might
> have jumped to conclusions here.
> 
> Also, I have, of course, been looking at (SMT) co-scheduling,
> specifically in the context of L1TF, myself. I came up with a vastly
> different approach. Tim - where are we on getting some of that posted?
> 
> Note; that even though I wrote much of that code, I don't particularly
> like it either :-)

Did your approach get posted to LKML? I never saw it I don't think, and
I don't see it on lore. Could it be posted as an RFC, even if not
suitable for upstreaming yet, just for comparison?

Thanks!
-Nish