linux-brain/Documentation/virtual/guest-halt-polling.txt
Marcelo Tosatti 2cffe9f6b9 cpuidle: add haltpoll governor
The cpuidle_haltpoll governor, in conjunction with the haltpoll cpuidle
driver, allows guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
halting.
This provides the following benefits to host side polling:

        1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
           a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
           cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.

        2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.

The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
even with other runnable tasks in the host.

Results comparing halt_poll_ns and server/client application
where a small packet is ping-ponged:

host                                        --> 31.33
halt_poll_ns=300000 / no guest busy spin    --> 33.40   (93.8%)
halt_poll_ns=0 / guest_halt_poll_ns=300000  --> 32.73   (95.7%)

For the SAP HANA benchmarks (where idle_spin is a parameter
of the previous version of the patch, results should be the
same):

hpns == halt_poll_ns

                          idle_spin=0/   idle_spin=800/    idle_spin=0/
                          hpns=200000    hpns=0            hpns=800000
DeleteC06T03 (100 thread) 1.76           1.71 (-3%)        1.78   (+1%)
InsertC16T02 (100 thread) 2.14           2.07 (-3%)        2.18   (+1.8%)
DeleteC00T01 (1 thread)   1.34           1.28 (-4.5%)      1.29   (-3.7%)
UpdateC00T03 (1 thread)   4.72           4.18 (-12%)       4.53   (-5%)

Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
2019-07-30 17:27:37 +02:00

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Guest halt polling
==================
The cpuidle_haltpoll driver, with the haltpoll governor, allows
the guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
halting.
This provides the following benefits to host side polling:
1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.
2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.
The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
even with other runnable tasks in the host.
The basic logic as follows: A global value, guest_halt_poll_ns,
is configured by the user, indicating the maximum amount of
time polling is allowed. This value is fixed.
Each vcpu has an adjustable guest_halt_poll_ns
("per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns"), which is adjusted by the algorithm
in response to events (explained below).
Module Parameters
=================
The haltpoll governor has 5 tunable module parameters:
1) guest_halt_poll_ns:
Maximum amount of time, in nanoseconds, that polling is
performed before halting.
Default: 200000
2) guest_halt_poll_shrink:
Division factor used to shrink per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when
wakeup event occurs after the global guest_halt_poll_ns.
Default: 2
3) guest_halt_poll_grow:
Multiplication factor used to grow per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
when event occurs after per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
but before global guest_halt_poll_ns.
Default: 2
4) guest_halt_poll_grow_start:
The per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns eventually reaches zero
in case of an idle system. This value sets the initial
per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when growing. This can
be increased from 10000, to avoid misses during the initial
growth stage:
10k, 20k, 40k, ... (example assumes guest_halt_poll_grow=2).
Default: 50000
5) guest_halt_poll_allow_shrink:
Bool parameter which allows shrinking. Set to N
to avoid it (per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns will remain
high once achieves global guest_halt_poll_ns value).
Default: Y
The module parameters can be set from the debugfs files in:
/sys/module/haltpoll/parameters/
Further Notes
=============
- Care should be taken when setting the guest_halt_poll_ns parameter as a
large value has the potential to drive the cpu usage to 100% on a machine which
would be almost entirely idle otherwise.