Re: [RFC 0/3] Introduce cpufreq minimum load QoS

[Valentin Schneider <valentin.schneider@arm.com>]

On 30/04/20 16:37, Benjamin GAIGNARD wrote:
> On 4/30/20 4:33 PM, Valentin Schneider wrote:
>> On 30/04/20 14:46, Benjamin GAIGNARD wrote:
>>>> That's not what I meant.
>>>>
>>>> I suppose that the interrupt processing in question takes place in
>>>> process context and so you may set the lower clamp on the utilization
>>>> of the task carrying that out.
>>> I have try to add this code when starting streaming (before the first
>>> interrupt) the frames from the sensor:
>>> const struct sched_attr sched_attr = {
>>>     .sched_util_min = 10000, /* 100% of usage */
>> Unless you play with SCHED_CAPACITY_SHIFT, the max should be 1024 -
>> i.e. SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE. That's a really big boost, but that's for you to
>> benchmark.
>>
>>>     .sched_flags = SCHED_FLAG_UTIL_CLAMP_MIN,
>>>    };
>>>
>>> sched_setattr(current, &sched_attr);
>>>
>>> I don't see any benefices maybe there is some configuration flags to set.
>>>
>>> How changing sched_util_min could impact cpufreq ondemand governor ?
>>> Does it change the value returned when the governor check the idle time ?
>>>
>> You'll have to use the schedutil governor for uclamp to have an effect. And
>> arguably that's what you should be using, unless something explicitly
>> prevents you from doing that.
> Even with schedutil and SCHED_CAPACITY_SCALE that it doesn't work.
> cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq values are always on the max value even if the
> stats show transitions between the available frequencies.
>
> I see two possibles reasons to explain that:
> - sched_setattr() is called in userland process context, but the
> threaded irq handler is running in another process.

Ah yes, this only works if the task you boost is the one that will handle
whatever work you care about (in this case handling the irq). That said, if
you do use threaded IRQs, that should give you a SCHED_FIFO thread, which
should drive the frequency to its max when using schedutil (unrelated to
uclamp).

> - because this use case is almost running all in hardware the process
> isn't doing anything so the scheduler doesn't take care of it.
>
>>
>>>> Alternatively, that task may be a deadline one.