Merge branch 'timers-nohz-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

Pull 'full dynticks' support from Ingo Molnar:
 "This tree from Frederic Weisbecker adds a new, (exciting! :-) core
  kernel feature to the timer and scheduler subsystems: 'full dynticks',
  or CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y.

  This feature extends the nohz variable-size timer tick feature from
  idle to busy CPUs (running at most one task) as well, potentially
  reducing the number of timer interrupts significantly.

  This feature got motivated by real-time folks and the -rt tree, but
  the general utility and motivation of full-dynticks runs wider than
  that:

   - HPC workloads get faster: CPUs running a single task should be able
     to utilize a maximum amount of CPU power.  A periodic timer tick at
     HZ=1000 can cause a constant overhead of up to 1.0%.  This feature
     removes that overhead - and speeds up the system by 0.5%-1.0% on
     typical distro configs even on modern systems.

   - Real-time workload latency reduction: CPUs running critical tasks
     should experience as little jitter as possible.  The last remaining
     source of kernel-related jitter was the periodic timer tick.

   - A single task executing on a CPU is a pretty common situation,
     especially with an increasing number of cores/CPUs, so this feature
     helps desktop and mobile workloads as well.

  The cost of the feature is mainly related to increased timer
  reprogramming overhead when a CPU switches its tick period, and thus
  slightly longer to-idle and from-idle latency.

  Configuration-wise a third mode of operation is added to the existing
  two NOHZ kconfig modes:

   - CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC: [formerly !CONFIG_NO_HZ], now explicitly named
     as a config option.  This is the traditional Linux periodic tick
     design: there's a HZ tick going on all the time, regardless of
     whether a CPU is idle or not.

   - CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE: [formerly CONFIG_NO_HZ=y], this turns off the
     periodic tick when a CPU enters idle mode.

   - CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL: this new mode, in addition to turning off the
     tick when a CPU is idle, also slows the tick down to 1 Hz (one
     timer interrupt per second) when only a single task is running on a
     CPU.

  The .config behavior is compatible: existing !CONFIG_NO_HZ and
  CONFIG_NO_HZ=y settings get translated to the new values, without the
  user having to configure anything.  CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL is turned off by
  default.

  This feature is based on a lot of infrastructure work that has been
  steadily going upstream in the last 2-3 cycles: related RCU support
  and non-periodic cputime support in particular is upstream already.

  This tree adds the final pieces and activates the feature.  The pull
  request is marked RFC because:

   - it's marked 64-bit only at the moment - the 32-bit support patch is
     small but did not get ready in time.

   - it has a number of fresh commits that came in after the merge
     window.  The overwhelming majority of commits are from before the
     merge window, but still some aspects of the tree are fresh and so I
     marked it RFC.

   - it's a pretty wide-reaching feature with lots of effects - and
     while the components have been in testing for some time, the full
     combination is still not very widely used.  That it's default-off
     should reduce its regression abilities and obviously there are no
     known regressions with CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y enabled either.

   - the feature is not completely idempotent: there is no 100%
     equivalent replacement for a periodic scheduler/timer tick.  In
     particular there's ongoing work to map out and reduce its effects
     on scheduler load-balancing and statistics.  This should not impact
     correctness though, there are no known regressions related to this
     feature at this point.

   - it's a pretty ambitious feature that with time will likely be
     enabled by most Linux distros, and we'd like you to make input on
     its design/implementation, if you dislike some aspect we missed.
     Without flaming us to crisp! :-)

  Future plans:

   - there's ongoing work to reduce 1Hz to 0Hz, to essentially shut off
     the periodic tick altogether when there's a single busy task on a
     CPU.  We'd first like 1 Hz to be exposed more widely before we go
     for the 0 Hz target though.

   - once we reach 0 Hz we can remove the periodic tick assumption from
     nr_running>=2 as well, by essentially interrupting busy tasks only
     as frequently as the sched_latency constraints require us to do -
     once every 4-40 msecs, depending on nr_running.

  I am personally leaning towards biting the bullet and doing this in
  v3.10, like the -rt tree this effort has been going on for too long -
  but the final word is up to you as usual.

  More technical details can be found in Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt"

* 'timers-nohz-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (39 commits)
  sched: Keep at least 1 tick per second for active dynticks tasks
  rcu: Fix full dynticks' dependency on wide RCU nocb mode
  nohz: Protect smp_processor_id() in tick_nohz_task_switch()
  nohz_full: Add documentation.
  cputime_nsecs: use math64.h for nsec resolution conversion helpers
  nohz: Select VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING_GEN from full dynticks config
  nohz: Reduce overhead under high-freq idling patterns
  nohz: Remove full dynticks' superfluous dependency on RCU tree
  nohz: Fix unavailable tick_stop tracepoint in dynticks idle
  nohz: Add basic tracing
  nohz: Select wide RCU nocb for full dynticks
  nohz: Disable the tick when irq resume in full dynticks CPU
  nohz: Re-evaluate the tick for the new task after a context switch
  nohz: Prepare to stop the tick on irq exit
  nohz: Implement full dynticks kick
  nohz: Re-evaluate the tick from the scheduler IPI
  sched: New helper to prevent from stopping the tick in full dynticks
  sched: Kick full dynticks CPU that have more than one task enqueued.
  perf: New helper to prevent full dynticks CPUs from stopping tick
  perf: Kick full dynticks CPU if events rotation is needed
  ...

4 files changed, 284 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt b/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
index e38b8df3d727..8e9359de1d28 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/stallwarn.txt
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ o	A CPU-bound real-time task in a CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT kernel that
 o	A hardware or software issue shuts off the scheduler-clock
 	interrupt on a CPU that is not in dyntick-idle mode.  This
 	problem really has happened, and seems to be most likely to
-	result in RCU CPU stall warnings for CONFIG_NO_HZ=n kernels.
+	result in RCU CPU stall warnings for CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON=n kernels.
 
 o	A bug in the RCU implementation.
 
diff --git a/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt b/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
index 66f9cc310686..219970ba54b7 100644
--- a/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
+++ b/Documentation/cpu-freq/governors.txt
@@ -131,8 +131,8 @@ sampling_rate_min:
 The sampling rate is limited by the HW transition latency:
 transition_latency * 100
 Or by kernel restrictions:
-If CONFIG_NO_HZ is set, the limit is 10ms fixed.
-If CONFIG_NO_HZ is not set or nohz=off boot parameter is used, the
+If CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON is set, the limit is 10ms fixed.
+If CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON is not set or nohz=off boot parameter is used, the
 limits depend on the CONFIG_HZ option:
 HZ=1000: min=20000us  (20ms)
 HZ=250:  min=80000us  (80ms)
diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 9653cf2f9727..8920f9f5fa9e 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -1964,6 +1964,14 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
 			Valid arguments: on, off
 			Default: on
 
+	nohz_full=	[KNL,BOOT]
+			In kernels built with CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y, set
+			the specified list of CPUs whose tick will be stopped
+			whenever possible. The boot CPU will be forced outside
+			the range to maintain the timekeeping.
+			The CPUs in this range must also be included in the
+			rcu_nocbs= set.
+
 	noiotrap	[SH] Disables trapped I/O port accesses.
 
 	noirqdebug	[X86-32] Disables the code which attempts to detect and
diff --git a/Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt b/Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..5b5322024067
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/timers/NO_HZ.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,273 @@
+		NO_HZ: Reducing Scheduling-Clock Ticks
+
+
+This document describes Kconfig options and boot parameters that can
+reduce the number of scheduling-clock interrupts, thereby improving energy
+efficiency and reducing OS jitter.  Reducing OS jitter is important for
+some types of computationally intensive high-performance computing (HPC)
+applications and for real-time applications.
+
+There are two main contexts in which the number of scheduling-clock
+interrupts can be reduced compared to the old-school approach of sending
+a scheduling-clock interrupt to all CPUs every jiffy whether they need
+it or not (CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC=y or CONFIG_NO_HZ=n for older kernels):
+
+1.	Idle CPUs (CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y or CONFIG_NO_HZ=y for older kernels).
+
+2.	CPUs having only one runnable task (CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y).
+
+These two cases are described in the following two sections, followed
+by a third section on RCU-specific considerations and a fourth and final
+section listing known issues.
+
+
+IDLE CPUs
+
+If a CPU is idle, there is little point in sending it a scheduling-clock
+interrupt.  After all, the primary purpose of a scheduling-clock interrupt
+is to force a busy CPU to shift its attention among multiple duties,
+and an idle CPU has no duties to shift its attention among.
+
+The CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y Kconfig option causes the kernel to avoid sending
+scheduling-clock interrupts to idle CPUs, which is critically important
+both to battery-powered devices and to highly virtualized mainframes.
+A battery-powered device running a CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC=y kernel would
+drain its battery very quickly, easily 2-3 times as fast as would the
+same device running a CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y kernel.  A mainframe running
+1,500 OS instances might find that half of its CPU time was consumed by
+unnecessary scheduling-clock interrupts.  In these situations, there
+is strong motivation to avoid sending scheduling-clock interrupts to
+idle CPUs.  That said, dyntick-idle mode is not free:
+
+1.	It increases the number of instructions executed on the path
+	to and from the idle loop.
+
+2.	On many architectures, dyntick-idle mode also increases the
+	number of expensive clock-reprogramming operations.
+
+Therefore, systems with aggressive real-time response constraints often
+run CONFIG_HZ_PERIODIC=y kernels (or CONFIG_NO_HZ=n for older kernels)
+in order to avoid degrading from-idle transition latencies.
+
+An idle CPU that is not receiving scheduling-clock interrupts is said to
+be "dyntick-idle", "in dyntick-idle mode", "in nohz mode", or "running
+tickless".  The remainder of this document will use "dyntick-idle mode".
+
+There is also a boot parameter "nohz=" that can be used to disable
+dyntick-idle mode in CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y kernels by specifying "nohz=off".
+By default, CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y kernels boot with "nohz=on", enabling
+dyntick-idle mode.
+
+
+CPUs WITH ONLY ONE RUNNABLE TASK
+
+If a CPU has only one runnable task, there is little point in sending it
+a scheduling-clock interrupt because there is no other task to switch to.
+
+The CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL=y Kconfig option causes the kernel to avoid
+sending scheduling-clock interrupts to CPUs with a single runnable task,
+and such CPUs are said to be "adaptive-ticks CPUs".  This is important
+for applications with aggressive real-time response constraints because
+it allows them to improve their worst-case response times by the maximum
+duration of a scheduling-clock interrupt.  It is also important for
+computationally intensive short-iteration workloads:  If any CPU is
+delayed during a given iteration, all the other CPUs will be forced to
+wait idle while the delayed CPU finishes.  Thus, the delay is multiplied
+by one less than the number of CPUs.  In these situations, there is
+again strong motivation to avoid sending scheduling-clock interrupts.
+
+By default, no CPU will be an adaptive-ticks CPU.  The "nohz_full="
+boot parameter specifies the adaptive-ticks CPUs.  For example,
+"nohz_full=1,6-8" says that CPUs 1, 6, 7, and 8 are to be adaptive-ticks
+CPUs.  Note that you are prohibited from marking all of the CPUs as
+adaptive-tick CPUs:  At least one non-adaptive-tick CPU must remain
+online to handle timekeeping tasks in order to ensure that system calls
+like gettimeofday() returns accurate values on adaptive-tick CPUs.
+(This is not an issue for CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE=y because there are no
+running user processes to observe slight drifts in clock rate.)
+Therefore, the boot CPU is prohibited from entering adaptive-ticks
+mode.  Specifying a "nohz_full=" mask that includes the boot CPU will
+result in a boot-time error message, and the boot CPU will be removed
+from the mask.
+
+Alternatively, the CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL_ALL=y Kconfig parameter specifies
+that all CPUs other than the boot CPU are adaptive-ticks CPUs.  This
+Kconfig parameter will be overridden by the "nohz_full=" boot parameter,
+so that if both the CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL_ALL=y Kconfig parameter and
+the "nohz_full=1" boot parameter is specified, the boot parameter will
+prevail so that only CPU 1 will be an adaptive-ticks CPU.
+
+Finally, adaptive-ticks CPUs must have their RCU callbacks offloaded.
+This is covered in the "RCU IMPLICATIONS" section below.
+
+Normally, a CPU remains in adaptive-ticks mode as long as possible.
+In particular, transitioning to kernel mode does not automatically change
+the mode.  Instead, the CPU will exit adaptive-ticks mode only if needed,
+for example, if that CPU enqueues an RCU callback.
+
+Just as with dyntick-idle mode, the benefits of adaptive-tick mode do
+not come for free:
+
+1.	CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL selects CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON, so you cannot run
+	adaptive ticks without also running dyntick idle.  This dependency
+	extends down into the implementation, so that all of the costs
+	of CONFIG_NO_HZ_IDLE are also incurred by CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL.
+
+2.	The user/kernel transitions are slightly more expensive due
+	to the need to inform kernel subsystems (such as RCU) about
+	the change in mode.
+
+3.	POSIX CPU timers on adaptive-tick CPUs may miss their deadlines
+	(perhaps indefinitely) because they currently rely on
+	scheduling-tick interrupts.  This will likely be fixed in
+	one of two ways: (1) Prevent CPUs with POSIX CPU timers from
+	entering adaptive-tick mode, or (2) Use hrtimers or other
+	adaptive-ticks-immune mechanism to cause the POSIX CPU timer to
+	fire properly.
+
+4.	If there are more perf events pending than the hardware can
+	accommodate, they are normally round-robined so as to collect
+	all of them over time.  Adaptive-tick mode may prevent this
+	round-robining from happening.  This will likely be fixed by
+	preventing CPUs with large numbers of perf events pending from
+	entering adaptive-tick mode.
+
+5.	Scheduler statistics for adaptive-tick CPUs may be computed
+	slightly differently than those for non-adaptive-tick CPUs.
+	This might in turn perturb load-balancing of real-time tasks.
+
+6.	The LB_BIAS scheduler feature is disabled by adaptive ticks.
+
+Although improvements are expected over time, adaptive ticks is quite
+useful for many types of real-time and compute-intensive applications.
+However, the drawbacks listed above mean that adaptive ticks should not
+(yet) be enabled by default.
+
+
+RCU IMPLICATIONS
+
+There are situations in which idle CPUs cannot be permitted to
+enter either dyntick-idle mode or adaptive-tick mode, the most
+common being when that CPU has RCU callbacks pending.
+
+The CONFIG_RCU_FAST_NO_HZ=y Kconfig option may be used to cause such CPUs
+to enter dyntick-idle mode or adaptive-tick mode anyway.  In this case,
+a timer will awaken these CPUs every four jiffies in order to ensure
+that the RCU callbacks are processed in a timely fashion.
+
+Another approach is to offload RCU callback processing to "rcuo" kthreads
+using the CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU=y Kconfig option.  The specific CPUs to
+offload may be selected via several methods:
+
+1.	One of three mutually exclusive Kconfig options specify a
+	build-time default for the CPUs to offload:
+
+	a.	The CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU_NONE=y Kconfig option results in
+		no CPUs being offloaded.
+
+	b.	The CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU_ZERO=y Kconfig option causes
+		CPU 0 to be offloaded.
+
+	c.	The CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU_ALL=y Kconfig option causes all
+		CPUs to be offloaded.  Note that the callbacks will be
+		offloaded to "rcuo" kthreads, and that those kthreads
+		will in fact run on some CPU.  However, this approach
+		gives fine-grained control on exactly which CPUs the
+		callbacks run on, along with their scheduling priority
+		(including the default of SCHED_OTHER), and it further
+		allows this control to be varied dynamically at runtime.
+
+2.	The "rcu_nocbs=" kernel boot parameter, which takes a comma-separated
+	list of CPUs and CPU ranges, for example, "1,3-5" selects CPUs 1,
+	3, 4, and 5.  The specified CPUs will be offloaded in addition to
+	any CPUs specified as offloaded by CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU_ZERO=y or
+	CONFIG_RCU_NOCB_CPU_ALL=y.  This means that the "rcu_nocbs=" boot
+	parameter has no effect for kernels built with RCU_NOCB_CPU_ALL=y.
+
+The offloaded CPUs will never queue RCU callbacks, and therefore RCU
+never prevents offloaded CPUs from entering either dyntick-idle mode
+or adaptive-tick mode.  That said, note that it is up to userspace to
+pin the "rcuo" kthreads to specific CPUs if desired.  Otherwise, the
+scheduler will decide where to run them, which might or might not be
+where you want them to run.
+
+
+KNOWN ISSUES
+
+o	Dyntick-idle slows transitions to and from idle slightly.
+	In practice, this has not been a problem except for the most
+	aggressive real-time workloads, which have the option of disabling
+	dyntick-idle mode, an option that most of them take.  However,
+	some workloads will no doubt want to use adaptive ticks to
+	eliminate scheduling-clock interrupt latencies.  Here are some
+	options for these workloads:
+
+	a.	Use PMQOS from userspace to inform the kernel of your
+		latency requirements (preferred).
+
+	b.	On x86 systems, use the "idle=mwait" boot parameter.
+
+	c.	On x86 systems, use the "intel_idle.max_cstate=" to limit
+	`	the maximum C-state depth.
+
+	d.	On x86 systems, use the "idle=poll" boot parameter.
+		However, please note that use of this parameter can cause
+		your CPU to overheat, which may cause thermal throttling
+		to degrade your latencies -- and that this degradation can
+		be even worse than that of dyntick-idle.  Furthermore,
+		this parameter effectively disables Turbo Mode on Intel
+		CPUs, which can significantly reduce maximum performance.
+
+o	Adaptive-ticks slows user/kernel transitions slightly.
+	This is not expected to be a problem for computationally intensive
+	workloads, which have few such transitions.  Careful benchmarking
+	will be required to determine whether or not other workloads
+	are significantly affected by this effect.
+
+o	Adaptive-ticks does not do anything unless there is only one
+	runnable task for a given CPU, even though there are a number
+	of other situations where the scheduling-clock tick is not
+	needed.  To give but one example, consider a CPU that has one
+	runnable high-priority SCHED_FIFO task and an arbitrary number
+	of low-priority SCHED_OTHER tasks.  In this case, the CPU is
+	required to run the SCHED_FIFO task until it either blocks or
+	some other higher-priority task awakens on (or is assigned to)
+	this CPU, so there is no point in sending a scheduling-clock
+	interrupt to this CPU.	However, the current implementation
+	nevertheless sends scheduling-clock interrupts to CPUs having a
+	single runnable SCHED_FIFO task and multiple runnable SCHED_OTHER
+	tasks, even though these interrupts are unnecessary.
+
+	Better handling of these sorts of situations is future work.
+
+o	A reboot is required to reconfigure both adaptive idle and RCU
+	callback offloading.  Runtime reconfiguration could be provided
+	if needed, however, due to the complexity of reconfiguring RCU at
+	runtime, there would need to be an earthshakingly good reason.
+	Especially given that you have the straightforward option of
+	simply offloading RCU callbacks from all CPUs and pinning them
+	where you want them whenever you want them pinned.
+
+o	Additional configuration is required to deal with other sources
+	of OS jitter, including interrupts and system-utility tasks
+	and processes.  This configuration normally involves binding
+	interrupts and tasks to particular CPUs.
+
+o	Some sources of OS jitter can currently be eliminated only by
+	constraining the workload.  For example, the only way to eliminate
+	OS jitter due to global TLB shootdowns is to avoid the unmapping
+	operations (such as kernel module unload operations) that
+	result in these shootdowns.  For another example, page faults
+	and TLB misses can be reduced (and in some cases eliminated) by
+	using huge pages and by constraining the amount of memory used
+	by the application.  Pre-faulting the working set can also be
+	helpful, especially when combined with the mlock() and mlockall()
+	system calls.
+
+o	Unless all CPUs are idle, at least one CPU must keep the
+	scheduling-clock interrupt going in order to support accurate
+	timekeeping.
+
+o	If there are adaptive-ticks CPUs, there will be at least one
+	CPU keeping the scheduling-clock interrupt going, even if all
+	CPUs are otherwise idle.