Re: More BFS benchmarks and scheduler issues

[Mike Galbraith <efault@gmx.de>]

On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 15:29 -0700, Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote:
> As an x264 developer, I have no position on the whole debate over
> BFS/CFS (nor am I a kernel hacker), but a friend of mine recently ran
> this set of tests with BFS vs CFS that still doesn't make any sense to
> me and suggests some sort of serious suboptimality in the existing
> scheduler:

Yup, I confirmed your friend's results.

> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> 
> Background information necessary to replicate test:
> 
> Input file: http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/y4m/soccer_4cif.y4m
> x264 source: git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
> revision of x264 used: e553a4c
> CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9300 (2.5GHz)
> Kernel/distro/platform: 2.6.31 patched with the gentoo patchset, Gentoo, x86_64.
> BFS patch: Latest available (BFS 220).
> Methodology: Each test was run 3 times. The median of the three was
> then selected.
> 
> ./x264/x264 --preset ultrafast --no-scenecut --sync-lookahead 0 --qp
> 20 samples/soccer_4cif.y4m -o /dev/null --threads X
>     BFS                 CFS
> 1: 124.79 fps       131.69 fps
> 2: 252.14 fps       192.14 fps
> 3: 376.55 fps       223.24 fps
> 4: 447.69 fps       242.54 fps
> 5: 447.98 fps       252.43 fps
> 6: 447.87 fps       253.56 fps
> 7: 444.79 fps       250.37 fps
> 8: 441.08 fps       251.95 fps

After a bit of testing, it turns out that NEXT_BUDDY and LB_BIAS
features are _both_ doing injury to this load.  We've been looking at
NEXT_BUDDY, but LB_BIAS is a new target.

Thanks a bunch for the nice repeatable testcase!

	-Mike

x264 --preset ultrafast --no-scenecut --sync-lookahead 0 --qp 20 -o /dev/null --threads $THREADS soccer_4cif.y4m

2.6.32-tip-smp
4  encoded 600 frames, 280.07 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 280.67 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 274.80 fps, 22096.60 kb/s

8  encoded 600 frames, 269.57 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 282.96 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 279.66 fps, 22096.60 kb/s

2.6.31-bfs221-smp
4  encoded 600 frames, 408.38 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 409.17 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 407.50 fps, 22096.60 kb/s

8  encoded 600 frames, 409.82 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 413.00 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 411.10 fps, 22096.60 kb/s

test test test...

2.6.32-tip-smp NO_NEXT_BUDDY NO_LB_BIAS
4  encoded 600 frames, 418.07 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 418.72 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 419.10 fps, 22096.60 kb/s

8  encoded 600 frames, 425.75 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 425.45 fps, 22096.60 kb/s
   encoded 600 frames, 422.49 fps, 22096.60 kb/s