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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2013-06-21 12:34:33 -0700
committerPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>2013-08-18 18:58:31 -0700
commit2333210b26cf7aaf48d71343029afb860103d9f9 (patch)
treed3395575543b67a7ca6a91158d65c3ee760500bf /drivers/target
parentb44379af1cf40050794832c38ea6a64e07eb5087 (diff)
nohz_full: Add rcu_dyntick data for scalable detection of all-idle state
This commit adds fields to the rcu_dyntick structure that are used to detect idle CPUs. These new fields differ from the existing ones in that the existing ones consider a CPU executing in user mode to be idle, where the new ones consider CPUs executing in user mode to be busy. The handling of these new fields is otherwise quite similar to that for the exiting fields. This commit also adds the initialization required for these fields. So, why is usermode execution treated differently, with RCU considering it a quiescent state equivalent to idle, while in contrast the new full-system idle state detection considers usermode execution to be non-idle? It turns out that although one of RCU's quiescent states is usermode execution, it is not a full-system idle state. This is because the purpose of the full-system idle state is not RCU, but rather determining when accurate timekeeping can safely be disabled. Whenever accurate timekeeping is required in a CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL kernel, at least one CPU must keep the scheduling-clock tick going. If even one CPU is executing in user mode, accurate timekeeping is requires, particularly for architectures where gettimeofday() and friends do not enter the kernel. Only when all CPUs are really and truly idle can accurate timekeeping be disabled, allowing all CPUs to turn off the scheduling clock interrupt, thus greatly improving energy efficiency. This naturally raises the question "Why is this code in RCU rather than in timekeeping?", and the answer is that RCU has the data and infrastructure to efficiently make this determination. Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Acked-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
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