Subject: Re: [PATCHv4 2/2] powerpc: implement arch_scale_smt_power for Power7

From: Peter Zijlstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:08:04 +0100

On Thu, 2010-02-18 at 10:28 -0600, Joel Schopp wrote:
> > There's one fundamental assumption, and one weakness in the
> > implementation.
> >   
> I'm going to guess the weakness is that it doesn't adjust the cpu power 
> so tasks running in SMT1 mode actually get more than they account for?  

No, but you're right, if these SMTx modes are running at different
frequencies then yes that needs to happen as well.

The weakness is failing to do the right thing in the presence of a
'strategically' placed RT task.

Suppose:

Sibling0, Sibling1, Sibling2, Sibling3
idle      OTHER     OTHER     FIFO

it might not manage to migrate a task to 0 because it ends up selecting
3 as busiest. It doesn't at all influence RT placement, but it does look
at nr_running (which does include RT tasks)

> What's the assumption? 

That cpu_of(Sibling n) < cpu_of(Sibling n+1)