sched/deadline: Add sched_dl documentation

Add in Documentation/scheduler/ some hints about the design
choices, the usage and the future possible developments of the
sched_dl scheduling class and of the SCHED_DEADLINE policy.

Reviewed-by: Henrik Austad <henrik@austad.us>
Signed-off-by: Dario Faggioli <raistlin@linux.it>
Signed-off-by: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@gmail.com>
[ Re-wrote sections 2 and 3. ]
Signed-off-by: Luca Abeni <luca.abeni@unitn.it>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1390821615-23247-1-git-send-email-juri.lelli@gmail.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

1 files changed, 281 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
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+			  Deadline Task Scheduling
+			  ------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+
+ 0. WARNING
+ 1. Overview
+ 2. Scheduling algorithm
+ 3. Scheduling Real-Time Tasks
+ 4. Bandwidth management
+   4.1 System-wide settings
+   4.2 Task interface
+   4.3 Default behavior
+ 5. Tasks CPU affinity
+   5.1 SCHED_DEADLINE and cpusets HOWTO
+ 6. Future plans
+
+
+0. WARNING
+==========
+
+ Fiddling with these settings can result in an unpredictable or even unstable
+ system behavior. As for -rt (group) scheduling, it is assumed that root users
+ know what they're doing.
+
+
+1. Overview
+===========
+
+ The SCHED_DEADLINE policy contained inside the sched_dl scheduling class is
+ basically an implementation of the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling
+ algorithm, augmented with a mechanism (called Constant Bandwidth Server, CBS)
+ that makes it possible to isolate the behavior of tasks between each other.
+
+
+2. Scheduling algorithm
+==================
+
+ SCHED_DEADLINE uses three parameters, named "runtime", "period", and
+ "deadline" to schedule tasks. A SCHED_DEADLINE task is guaranteed to receive
+ "runtime" microseconds of execution time every "period" microseconds, and
+ these "runtime" microseconds are available within "deadline" microseconds
+ from the beginning of the period.  In order to implement this behaviour,
+ every time the task wakes up, the scheduler computes a "scheduling deadline"
+ consistent with the guarantee (using the CBS[2,3] algorithm). Tasks are then
+ scheduled using EDF[1] on these scheduling deadlines (the task with the
+ smallest scheduling deadline is selected for execution). Notice that this
+ guaranteed is respected if a proper "admission control" strategy (see Section
+ "4. Bandwidth management") is used.
+
+ Summing up, the CBS[2,3] algorithms assigns scheduling deadlines to tasks so
+ that each task runs for at most its runtime every period, avoiding any
+ interference between different tasks (bandwidth isolation), while the EDF[1]
+ algorithm selects the task with the smallest scheduling deadline as the one
+ to be executed first.  Thanks to this feature, also tasks that do not
+ strictly comply with the "traditional" real-time task model (see Section 3)
+ can effectively use the new policy.
+
+ In more details, the CBS algorithm assigns scheduling deadlines to
+ tasks in the following way:
+
+  - Each SCHED_DEADLINE task is characterised by the "runtime",
+    "deadline", and "period" parameters;
+
+  - The state of the task is described by a "scheduling deadline", and
+    a "current runtime". These two parameters are initially set to 0;
+
+  - When a SCHED_DEADLINE task wakes up (becomes ready for execution),
+    the scheduler checks if
+
+                    current runtime                runtime
+         ---------------------------------- > ----------------
+         scheduling deadline - current time         period
+
+    then, if the scheduling deadline is smaller than the current time, or
+    this condition is verified, the scheduling deadline and the
+    current budget are re-initialised as
+
+         scheduling deadline = current time + deadline
+         current runtime = runtime
+
+    otherwise, the scheduling deadline and the current runtime are
+    left unchanged;
+
+  - When a SCHED_DEADLINE task executes for an amount of time t, its
+    current runtime is decreased as
+
+         current runtime = current runtime - t
+
+    (technically, the runtime is decreased at every tick, or when the
+    task is descheduled / preempted);
+
+  - When the current runtime becomes less or equal than 0, the task is
+    said to be "throttled" (also known as "depleted" in real-time literature)
+    and cannot be scheduled until its scheduling deadline. The "replenishment
+    time" for this task (see next item) is set to be equal to the current
+    value of the scheduling deadline;
+
+  - When the current time is equal to the replenishment time of a
+    throttled task, the scheduling deadline and the current runtime are
+    updated as
+
+         scheduling deadline = scheduling deadline + period
+         current runtime = current runtime + runtime
+
+
+3. Scheduling Real-Time Tasks
+=============================
+
+ * BIG FAT WARNING ******************************************************
+ *
+ * This section contains a (not-thorough) summary on classical deadline
+ * scheduling theory, and how it applies to SCHED_DEADLINE.
+ * The reader can "safely" skip to Section 4 if only interested in seeing
+ * how the scheduling policy can be used. Anyway, we strongly recommend
+ * to come back here and continue reading (once the urge for testing is
+ * satisfied :P) to be sure of fully understanding all technical details.
+ ************************************************************************
+
+ There are no limitations on what kind of task can exploit this new
+ scheduling discipline, even if it must be said that it is particularly
+ suited for periodic or sporadic real-time tasks that need guarantees on their
+ timing behavior, e.g., multimedia, streaming, control applications, etc.
+
+ A typical real-time task is composed of a repetition of computation phases
+ (task instances, or jobs) which are activated on a periodic or sporadic
+ fashion.
+ Each job J_j (where J_j is the j^th job of the task) is characterised by an
+ arrival time r_j (the time when the job starts), an amount of computation
+ time c_j needed to finish the job, and a job absolute deadline d_j, which
+ is the time within which the job should be finished. The maximum execution
+ time max_j{c_j} is called "Worst Case Execution Time" (WCET) for the task.
+ A real-time task can be periodic with period P if r_{j+1} = r_j + P, or
+ sporadic with minimum inter-arrival time P is r_{j+1} >= r_j + P. Finally,
+ d_j = r_j + D, where D is the task's relative deadline.
+
+ SCHED_DEADLINE can be used to schedule real-time tasks guaranteeing that
+ the jobs' deadlines of a task are respected. In order to do this, a task
+ must be scheduled by setting:
+
+  - runtime >= WCET
+  - deadline = D
+  - period <= P
+
+ IOW, if runtime >= WCET and if period is >= P, then the scheduling deadlines
+ and the absolute deadlines (d_j) coincide, so a proper admission control
+ allows to respect the jobs' absolute deadlines for this task (this is what is
+ called "hard schedulability property" and is an extension of Lemma 1 of [2]).
+
+ References:
+  1 - C. L. Liu and J. W. Layland. Scheduling algorithms for multiprogram-
+      ming in a hard-real-time environment. Journal of the Association for
+      Computing Machinery, 20(1), 1973.
+  2 - L. Abeni , G. Buttazzo. Integrating Multimedia Applications in Hard
+      Real-Time Systems. Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-time Systems
+      Symposium, 1998. http://retis.sssup.it/~giorgio/paps/1998/rtss98-cbs.pdf
+  3 - L. Abeni. Server Mechanisms for Multimedia Applications. ReTiS Lab
+      Technical Report. http://xoomer.virgilio.it/lucabe72/pubs/tr-98-01.ps
+
+4. Bandwidth management
+=======================
+
+ In order for the -deadline scheduling to be effective and useful, it is
+ important to have some method to keep the allocation of the available CPU
+ bandwidth to the tasks under control.
+ This is usually called "admission control" and if it is not performed at all,
+ no guarantee can be given on the actual scheduling of the -deadline tasks.
+
+ Since when RT-throttling has been introduced each task group has a bandwidth
+ associated, calculated as a certain amount of runtime over a period.
+ Moreover, to make it possible to manipulate such bandwidth, readable/writable
+ controls have been added to both procfs (for system wide settings) and cgroupfs
+ (for per-group settings).
+ Therefore, the same interface is being used for controlling the bandwidth
+ distrubution to -deadline tasks.
+
+ However, more discussion is needed in order to figure out how we want to manage
+ SCHED_DEADLINE bandwidth at the task group level. Therefore, SCHED_DEADLINE
+ uses (for now) a less sophisticated, but actually very sensible, mechanism to
+ ensure that a certain utilization cap is not overcome per each root_domain.
+
+ Another main difference between deadline bandwidth management and RT-throttling
+ is that -deadline tasks have bandwidth on their own (while -rt ones don't!),
+ and thus we don't need an higher level throttling mechanism to enforce the
+ desired bandwidth.
+
+4.1 System wide settings
+------------------------
+
+ The system wide settings are configured under the /proc virtual file system.
+
+ For now the -rt knobs are used for dl admission control and the -deadline
+ runtime is accounted against the -rt runtime. We realise that this isn't
+ entirely desirable; however, it is better to have a small interface for now,
+ and be able to change it easily later. The ideal situation (see 5.) is to run
+ -rt tasks from a -deadline server; in which case the -rt bandwidth is a direct
+ subset of dl_bw.
+
+ This means that, for a root_domain comprising M CPUs, -deadline tasks
+ can be created while the sum of their bandwidths stays below:
+
+   M * (sched_rt_runtime_us / sched_rt_period_us)
+
+ It is also possible to disable this bandwidth management logic, and
+ be thus free of oversubscribing the system up to any arbitrary level.
+ This is done by writing -1 in /proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us.
+
+
+4.2 Task interface
+------------------
+
+ Specifying a periodic/sporadic task that executes for a given amount of
+ runtime at each instance, and that is scheduled according to the urgency of
+ its own timing constraints needs, in general, a way of declaring:
+  - a (maximum/typical) instance execution time,
+  - a minimum interval between consecutive instances,
+  - a time constraint by which each instance must be completed.
+
+ Therefore:
+  * a new struct sched_attr, containing all the necessary fields is
+    provided;
+  * the new scheduling related syscalls that manipulate it, i.e.,
+    sched_setattr() and sched_getattr() are implemented.
+
+
+4.3 Default behavior
+---------------------
+
+ The default value for SCHED_DEADLINE bandwidth is to have rt_runtime equal to
+ 950000. With rt_period equal to 1000000, by default, it means that -deadline
+ tasks can use at most 95%, multiplied by the number of CPUs that compose the
+ root_domain, for each root_domain.
+
+ A -deadline task cannot fork.
+
+5. Tasks CPU affinity
+=====================
+
+ -deadline tasks cannot have an affinity mask smaller that the entire
+ root_domain they are created on. However, affinities can be specified
+ through the cpuset facility (Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt).
+
+5.1 SCHED_DEADLINE and cpusets HOWTO
+------------------------------------
+
+ An example of a simple configuration (pin a -deadline task to CPU0)
+ follows (rt-app is used to create a -deadline task).
+
+ mkdir /dev/cpuset
+ mount -t cgroup -o cpuset cpuset /dev/cpuset
+ cd /dev/cpuset
+ mkdir cpu0
+ echo 0 > cpu0/cpuset.cpus
+ echo 0 > cpu0/cpuset.mems
+ echo 1 > cpuset.cpu_exclusive
+ echo 0 > cpuset.sched_load_balance
+ echo 1 > cpu0/cpuset.cpu_exclusive
+ echo 1 > cpu0/cpuset.mem_exclusive
+ echo $$ > cpu0/tasks
+ rt-app -t 100000:10000:d:0 -D5 (it is now actually superfluous to specify
+ task affinity)
+
+6. Future plans
+===============
+
+ Still missing:
+
+  - refinements to deadline inheritance, especially regarding the possibility
+    of retaining bandwidth isolation among non-interacting tasks. This is
+    being studied from both theoretical and practical points of view, and
+    hopefully we should be able to produce some demonstrative code soon;
+  - (c)group based bandwidth management, and maybe scheduling;
+  - access control for non-root users (and related security concerns to
+    address), which is the best way to allow unprivileged use of the mechanisms
+    and how to prevent non-root users "cheat" the system?
+
+ As already discussed, we are planning also to merge this work with the EDF
+ throttling patches [https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/2/23/239] but we still are in
+ the preliminary phases of the merge and we really seek feedback that would
+ help us decide on the direction it should take.