The current code will call pick_next_task_fair a second time in the slow path if we did not pull any task in our first try. This is really unnecessary as we already know no task can be pulled and it doubles the delay for the cpu to enter idle.
We instrumented some network workloads and that saw that pick_next_task_fair is frequently called twice before a cpu enters idle. The call to pick_next_task_fair can add non trivial latency as it calls load_balance which runs find_busiest_group on an hierarchy of sched domains spanning the cpus for a large system. For some 4 socket systems, we saw almost 0.25 msec spent per call of pick_next_task_fair before a cpu can be idled. This patch skips pick_next_task_fair in the slow path if it has already been invoked. Tim Signed-off-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.c...@linux.intel.com> --- kernel/sched/core.c | 8 +++++++- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c index 1d1b87b..4053437 100644 --- a/kernel/sched/core.c +++ b/kernel/sched/core.c @@ -2583,6 +2583,7 @@ pick_next_task(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev) { const struct sched_class *class = &fair_sched_class; struct task_struct *p; + int skip_fair = 0; /* * Optimization: we know that if all tasks are in @@ -2591,12 +2592,17 @@ pick_next_task(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev) if (likely(prev->sched_class == class && rq->nr_running == rq->cfs.h_nr_running)) { p = fair_sched_class.pick_next_task(rq, prev); - if (likely(p && p != RETRY_TASK)) + if (!p) + skip_fair = 1; + else if (likely(p != RETRY_TASK)) return p; } again: for_each_class(class) { + /* if we have already failed to pull fair task, skip */ + if (class == &fair_sched_class && skip_fair) + continue; p = class->pick_next_task(rq, prev); if (p) { if (unlikely(p == RETRY_TASK)) -- 1.7.11.7 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/