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Gabriele Monaco 7dec062cfc timers/migration: Exclude isolated cpus from hierarchy
The timer migration mechanism allows active CPUs to pull timers from
idle ones to improve the overall idle time. This is however undesired
when CPU intensive workloads run on isolated cores, as the algorithm
would move the timers from housekeeping to isolated cores, negatively
affecting the isolation.

Exclude isolated cores from the timer migration algorithm, extend the
concept of unavailable cores, currently used for offline ones, to
isolated ones:
* A core is unavailable if isolated or offline;
* A core is available if non isolated and online;

A core is considered unavailable as isolated if it belongs to:
* the isolcpus (domain) list
* an isolated cpuset
Except if it is:
* in the nohz_full list (already idle for the hierarchy)
* the nohz timekeeper core (must be available to handle global timers)

CPUs are added to the hierarchy during late boot, excluding isolated
ones, the hierarchy is also adapted when the cpuset isolation changes.

Due to how the timer migration algorithm works, any CPU part of the
hierarchy can have their global timers pulled by remote CPUs and have to
pull remote timers, only skipping pulling remote timers would break the
logic.
For this reason, prevent isolated CPUs from pulling remote global
timers, but also the other way around: any global timer started on an
isolated CPU will run there. This does not break the concept of
isolation (global timers don't come from outside the CPU) and, if
considered inappropriate, can usually be mitigated with other isolation
techniques (e.g. IRQ pinning).

This effect was noticed on a 128 cores machine running oslat on the
isolated cores (1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127). The tool monopolises CPUs,
and the CPU with lowest count in a timer migration hierarchy (here 1
and 65) appears as always active and continuously pulls global timers,
from the housekeeping CPUs. This ends up moving driver work (e.g.
delayed work) to isolated CPUs and causes latency spikes:

before the change:

 # oslat -c 1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127 -D 62s
 ...
  Maximum:     1203 10 3 4 ... 5 (us)

after the change:

 # oslat -c 1-31,33-63,65-95,97-127 -D 62s
 ...
  Maximum:      10 4 3 4 3 ... 5 (us)

The same behaviour was observed on a machine with as few as 20 cores /
40 threads with isocpus set to: 1-9,11-39 with rtla-osnoise-top.

Signed-off-by: Gabriele Monaco <gmonaco@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Tested-by: John B. Wyatt IV <jwyatt@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reviewed-by: Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251120145653.296659-8-gmonaco@redhat.com
2025-11-20 20:17:32 +01:00
Documentation - Convert the SSB mitigation to the attack vector controls which got forgotten 2025-08-31 09:20:17 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Replace the obsolete address of the FSF in the GFDL-1.2 2025-07-24 11:15:39 +02:00
arch LoongArch: Remove clockevents shutdown call on offlining 2025-09-09 13:39:00 +02:00
block block: validate QoS before calling __rq_qos_done_bio() 2025-08-26 10:34:08 -06:00
certs sign-file,extract-cert: use pkcs11 provider for OPENSSL MAJOR >= 3 2024-09-20 19:52:48 +03:00
crypto Significant patch series in this pull request: 2025-08-03 16:23:09 -07:00
drivers media: pwm-ir-tx: Avoid direct access to hrtimer clockbase 2025-09-09 12:27:18 +02:00
fs EFI fixes for v6.17 #1 2025-08-29 09:15:46 -07:00
include timers/migration: Exclude isolated cpus from hierarchy 2025-11-20 20:17:32 +01:00
init hardening: Require clang 20.1.0 for __counted_by 2025-08-29 12:04:53 -07:00
io_uring io_uring/kbuf: always use READ_ONCE() to read ring provided buffer lengths 2025-08-28 05:48:34 -06:00
ipc vfs-6.17-rc1.mmap_prepare 2025-07-28 13:43:25 -07:00
kernel timers/migration: Exclude isolated cpus from hierarchy 2025-11-20 20:17:32 +01:00
lib lib: test_objpool: Avoid direct access to hrtimer clockbase 2025-09-09 12:27:18 +02:00
mm memblock fixes for v6.17-rc4 2025-08-28 15:46:06 -07:00
net net: ipv4: fix regression in local-broadcast routes 2025-08-28 10:52:30 +02:00
rust Driver core fixes for 6.16-rc3 2025-08-23 09:04:32 -04:00
samples Significant patch series in this pull request: 2025-08-03 16:23:09 -07:00
scripts hrtimer: Remove hrtimer_clock_base:: Get_time 2025-09-09 12:27:18 +02:00
security + Features 2025-08-04 08:17:28 -07:00
sound ALSA: hrtimer: Avoid direct access to hrtimer clockbase 2025-09-09 12:27:18 +02:00
tools selftests/timers/nanosleep: Add tests for return of remaining time 2025-11-14 20:34:50 +01:00
usr usr/include: openrisc: don't HDRTEST bpf_perf_event.h 2025-05-12 15:03:17 +09:00
virt Merge tag 'kvm-x86-no_assignment-6.17' of https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux into HEAD 2025-07-29 08:36:42 -04:00
.clang-format Linux 6.15-rc5 2025-05-06 16:39:25 +10:00
.clippy.toml rust: clean Rust 1.88.0's warning about `clippy::disallowed_macros` configuration 2025-05-07 00:11:47 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.editorconfig .editorconfig: remove trim_trailing_whitespace option 2024-06-13 16:47:52 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore MAINTAINERS: Retire Ralf Baechle 2024-11-12 15:48:59 +01:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore gitignore: allow .pylintrc to be tracked 2025-07-02 17:10:04 -06:00
.mailmap .mailmap: add entry for Easwar Hariharan 2025-08-19 16:35:55 -07:00
.pylintrc docs: add a .pylintrc file with sys path for docs scripts 2025-04-09 12:10:33 -06:00
.rustfmt.toml
COPYING
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: retire Boris from TLS maintainers 2025-08-26 17:36:01 -07:00
Kbuild drm: ensure drm headers are self-contained and pass kernel-doc 2025-02-12 10:44:43 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS gpio fixes for v6.17-rc4 2025-08-31 08:49:55 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.17-rc4 2025-08-31 15:33:07 -07:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.