sched: Add over-utilization/tipping point indicator

Energy-aware scheduling is only meant to be active while the system is
_not_ over-utilized. That is, there are spare cycles available to shift
tasks around based on their actual utilization to get a more
energy-efficient task distribution without depriving any tasks. When
above the tipping point task placement is done the traditional way based
on load_avg, spreading the tasks across as many cpus as possible based
on priority scaled load to preserve smp_nice. Below the tipping point we
want to use util_avg instead. We need to define a criteria for when we
make the switch.

The util_avg for each cpu converges towards 100% (1024) regardless of
how many task additional task we may put on it. If we define
over-utilized as:

sum_{cpus}(rq.cfs.avg.util_avg) + margin > sum_{cpus}(rq.capacity)

some individual cpus may be over-utilized running multiple tasks even
when the above condition is false. That should be okay as long as we try
to spread the tasks out to avoid per-cpu over-utilization as much as
possible and if all tasks have the _same_ priority. If the latter isn't
true, we have to consider priority to preserve smp_nice.

For example, we could have n_cpus nice=-10 util_avg=55% tasks and
n_cpus/2 nice=0 util_avg=60% tasks. Balancing based on util_avg we are
likely to end up with nice=-10 tasks sharing cpus and nice=0 tasks
getting their own as we 1.5*n_cpus tasks in total and 55%+55% is less
over-utilized than 55%+60% for those cpus that have to be shared. The
system utilization is only 85% of the system capacity, but we are
breaking smp_nice.

To be sure not to break smp_nice, we have defined over-utilization
conservatively as when any cpu in the system is fully utilized at it's
highest frequency instead:

cpu_rq(any).cfs.avg.util_avg + margin > cpu_rq(any).capacity

IOW, as soon as one cpu is (nearly) 100% utilized, we switch to load_avg
to factor in priority to preserve smp_nice.

With this definition, we can skip periodic load-balance as no cpu has an
always-running task when the system is not over-utilized. All tasks will
be periodic and we can balance them at wake-up. This conservative
condition does however mean that some scenarios that could benefit from
energy-aware decisions even if one cpu is fully utilized would not get
those benefits.

For system where some cpus might have reduced capacity on some cpus
(RT-pressure and/or big.LITTLE), we want periodic load-balance checks as
soon a just a single cpu is fully utilized as it might one of those with
reduced capacity and in that case we want to migrate it.

cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Morten Rasmussen <morten.rasmussen@arm.com>

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/sched/sched.h b/kernel/sched/sched.h
index a618db2936d4..5323d4fc1109 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/sched.h
+++ b/kernel/sched/sched.h
@@ -528,6 +528,9 @@ struct root_domain {
 	/* Indicate more than one runnable task for any CPU */
 	bool overload;
 
+	/* Indicate one or more cpus over-utilized (tipping point) */
+	bool overutilized;
+
 	/*
 	 * The bit corresponding to a CPU gets set here if such CPU has more
 	 * than one runnable -deadline task (as it is below for RT tasks).