Re: [PATCH RFC] cpuidle: consolidate calls to time capture

[Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@linaro.org>]

On 18/03/2020 12:04, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
> 
> Hi Rafael,
> 
> On 18/03/2020 11:17, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
>> On Monday, March 16, 2020 10:08:43 PM CET Daniel Lezcano wrote:
>>> A few years ago, we changed the code in cpuidle to replace ktime_get()
>>> by a local_clock() to get rid of potential seq lock in the path and an
>>> extra latency.
>>>
>>> Meanwhile, the code evolved and we are getting the time in some other
>>> places like the power domain governor and in the future break even
>>> deadline proposal.
>>
>> Hmm?
>>
>> Have any patches been posted for that?
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/3/11/1113
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/3/13/466
> 
> but there is no consensus yet if that has a benefit or not.
> 
>>> Unfortunately, as the time must be compared across the CPU, we have no
>>> other option than using the ktime_get() again. Hopefully, we can
>>> factor out all the calls to local_clock() and ktime_get() into a
>>> single one when the CPU is entering idle as the value will be reuse in
>>> different places.
>>
>> So there are cases in which it is not necessary to synchronize the time
>> between CPUs and those would take the overhead unnecessarily.
>>
>> This change looks premature to me at least.
> 
> The idea is to call one time ktime_get() when entering idle and store
> the result in the struct cpuidle_device, so we have the information when
> we entered idle.
> 
> Moreover, ktime_get() is called in do_idle() via:
> 
> tick_nohz_idle_enter()
>   tick_nohz_start_idle()
>     ts->idle_entrytime = ktime_get();
> 
> This is called at the first loop level. The idle loop is exiting and
> re-entering again without passing through tick_nohz_idle_enter() in the
> second loop level in case of interrupt processing, thus the
> idle_entrytime is not updated and the return of
> tick_nohz_get_sleep_length() will be greater than what is expected.
> 
> May be we can consider ktime_get_mono_fast_ns() which is lockless with a
> particular care of the non-monotonic aspect if needed. Given the
> description at [1] the time jump could a few nanoseconds in case of NMI.
> 
> The local_clock() can no be inspected across CPUs, the gap is too big
> and continues to increase during system lifetime.

I took the opportunity to measure the duration to a call to ktime_get,
ktime_get_mono_fast_ns and local_clock.

The result is an average of 10000 measurements and an average of 1000
run of those.

The duration is measured with local_clock(), ktime_get() and
ktime_get_mono_fast_ns()

Measurement with local_clock():
-------------------------------

ktime_get():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	71	168	109052	109.052	13.0278

ktime_get_mono_fast_ns():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	66	153	101135	101.135	11.9262

local_clock():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	70	163	106896	106.896	12.8575


Measurement with ktime_get():
-----------------------------

ktime_get():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	71	124	100465	100.465	10.0272

ktime_get_mono_fast_ns():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	67	124	94451	94.451	9.67218

local_clock():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	71	123	99765	99.765	10.0508


Measurement with ktime_get_mono_fast_ns():
------------------------------------------

ktime_get():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	67	116	87562	87.562	4.38399

ktime_get_mono_fast_ns():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	62	104	81017	81.017	4.12453

local_clock():
N	min	max	sum	mean	stddev
1000	65	110	85919	85.919	4.24859



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