[RFC PATCH v2 3/6] sched: pack small tasks

[Alex Shi]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Vincent Guittot
<vincent.guittot at linaro.org> wrote:
> On 17 December 2012 16:24, Alex Shi <alex.shi at intel.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>> The scheme below tries to summaries the idea:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Socket      | socket 0 | socket 1   | socket 2   | socket 3   |
>>>>>>>> LCPU        | 0 | 1-15 | 16 | 17-31 | 32 | 33-47 | 48 | 49-63 |
>>>>>>>> buddy conf0 | 0 | 0    | 1  | 16    | 2  | 32    | 3  | 48    |
>>>>>>>> buddy conf1 | 0 | 0    | 0  | 16    | 16 | 32    | 32 | 48    |
>>>>>>>> buddy conf2 | 0 | 0    | 16 | 16    | 32 | 32    | 48 | 48    |
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But, I don't know how this can interact with NUMA load balance and the
>>>>>>>> better might be to use conf3.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I mean conf2 not conf3

>
> Cyclictest is the ultimate small tasks use case which points out all
> weaknesses of a scheduler for such kind of tasks.
> Music playback is a more realistic one and it also shows improvement
>
>> granularity or one tick, thus we really don't need to consider task
>> migration cost. But when the task are not too small, migration is more
>
> For which kind of machine are you stating that hypothesis ?

Seems the biggest argument between us is you didn't want to admit 'not
too small tasks' exists and that will cause more migrations because
your patch.

>> even so they should run in the same socket for power saving
>> consideration(my power scheduling patch can do this), instead of spread
>> to all sockets.
>
> This is may be good for your scenario and your machine :-)
> Packing small tasks is the best choice for any scenario and machine.

That's clearly wrong, I had explained many times, your single buddy
CPU is impossible packing all tasks for a  big machine, like for just
16 LCPU, while it suppose do.

Anyway you have right insist your design. and I thought I can not say
more clear about the scalability issue. I won't judge the patch again.