Re: [PATCH v3] sched/core: Tweak wait_task_inactive() to force dequeue sched_delayed tasks

[Phil Auld <pauld@redhat.com>]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2025 at 02:44:25PM +0200 Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2025 at 11:36:05AM -0400, Phil Auld wrote:
> > Hi John,
> > 
> > On Tue, Apr 29, 2025 at 08:07:26AM -0700 John Stultz wrote:
> > > It was reported that in 6.12, smpboot_create_threads() was
> > > taking much longer then in 6.6.
> > > 
> > > I narrowed down the call path to:
> > >  smpboot_create_threads()
> > >  -> kthread_create_on_cpu()
> > >     -> kthread_bind()
> > >        -> __kthread_bind_mask()
> > >           ->wait_task_inactive()
> > > 
> > > Where in wait_task_inactive() we were regularly hitting the
> > > queued case, which sets a 1 tick timeout, which when called
> > > multiple times in a row, accumulates quickly into a long
> > > delay.
> > > 
> > > I noticed disabling the DELAY_DEQUEUE sched feature recovered
> > > the performance, and it seems the newly create tasks are usually
> > > sched_delayed and left on the runqueue.
> > 
> > This seems odd to me. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding something but
> > I don't see how newly created tasks should have accumulated enough
> > runtime to have negative lag that needs to be decayed. 
> > 
> > That said, I think it does make sense to dequeue in this case. 
> 
> Well, they start at 0, any runtime will likely push them negative.
> 

I thought they "made a request" and got a slice when entering the
competition so would not immediately go negative when executing.
It's now been a while since I read the paper though...

Starting at 0 (service that it ought to have is none) and going
immediately negative seems to imply never having positive lag. But,
like I said, probably just misunderstanding something :)



Cheers,
Phil
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