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Documentation / scheduler / sched-domains.txt


Based on kernel version 4.16.1. Page generated on 2018-04-09 11:53 EST.

1	Each CPU has a "base" scheduling domain (struct sched_domain). The domain
2	hierarchy is built from these base domains via the ->parent pointer. ->parent
3	MUST be NULL terminated, and domain structures should be per-CPU as they are
4	locklessly updated.
5	
6	Each scheduling domain spans a number of CPUs (stored in the ->span field).
7	A domain's span MUST be a superset of it child's span (this restriction could
8	be relaxed if the need arises), and a base domain for CPU i MUST span at least
9	i. The top domain for each CPU will generally span all CPUs in the system
10	although strictly it doesn't have to, but this could lead to a case where some
11	CPUs will never be given tasks to run unless the CPUs allowed mask is
12	explicitly set. A sched domain's span means "balance process load among these
13	CPUs".
14	
15	Each scheduling domain must have one or more CPU groups (struct sched_group)
16	which are organised as a circular one way linked list from the ->groups
17	pointer. The union of cpumasks of these groups MUST be the same as the
18	domain's span. The intersection of cpumasks from any two of these groups
19	MUST be the empty set. The group pointed to by the ->groups pointer MUST
20	contain the CPU to which the domain belongs. Groups may be shared among
21	CPUs as they contain read only data after they have been set up.
22	
23	Balancing within a sched domain occurs between groups. That is, each group
24	is treated as one entity. The load of a group is defined as the sum of the
25	load of each of its member CPUs, and only when the load of a group becomes
26	out of balance are tasks moved between groups.
27	
28	In kernel/sched/core.c, trigger_load_balance() is run periodically on each CPU
29	through scheduler_tick(). It raises a softirq after the next regularly scheduled
30	rebalancing event for the current runqueue has arrived. The actual load
31	balancing workhorse, run_rebalance_domains()->rebalance_domains(), is then run
32	in softirq context (SCHED_SOFTIRQ).
33	
34	The latter function takes two arguments: the current CPU and whether it was idle
35	at the time the scheduler_tick() happened and iterates over all sched domains
36	our CPU is on, starting from its base domain and going up the ->parent chain.
37	While doing that, it checks to see if the current domain has exhausted its
38	rebalance interval. If so, it runs load_balance() on that domain. It then checks
39	the parent sched_domain (if it exists), and the parent of the parent and so
40	forth.
41	
42	Initially, load_balance() finds the busiest group in the current sched domain.
43	If it succeeds, it looks for the busiest runqueue of all the CPUs' runqueues in
44	that group. If it manages to find such a runqueue, it locks both our initial
45	CPU's runqueue and the newly found busiest one and starts moving tasks from it
46	to our runqueue. The exact number of tasks amounts to an imbalance previously
47	computed while iterating over this sched domain's groups.
48	
49	*** Implementing sched domains ***
50	The "base" domain will "span" the first level of the hierarchy. In the case
51	of SMT, you'll span all siblings of the physical CPU, with each group being
52	a single virtual CPU.
53	
54	In SMP, the parent of the base domain will span all physical CPUs in the
55	node. Each group being a single physical CPU. Then with NUMA, the parent
56	of the SMP domain will span the entire machine, with each group having the
57	cpumask of a node. Or, you could do multi-level NUMA or Opteron, for example,
58	might have just one domain covering its one NUMA level.
59	
60	The implementor should read comments in include/linux/sched.h:
61	struct sched_domain fields, SD_FLAG_*, SD_*_INIT to get an idea of
62	the specifics and what to tune.
63	
64	Architectures may retain the regular override the default SD_*_INIT flags
65	while using the generic domain builder in kernel/sched/core.c if they wish to
66	retain the traditional SMT->SMP->NUMA topology (or some subset of that). This
67	can be done by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_TUNE.
68	
69	Alternatively, the architecture may completely override the generic domain
70	builder by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_DOMAIN, and exporting your
71	arch_init_sched_domains function. This function will attach domains to all
72	CPUs using cpu_attach_domain.
73	
74	The sched-domains debugging infrastructure can be enabled by enabling
75	CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG. This enables an error checking parse of the sched domains
76	which should catch most possible errors (described above). It also prints out
77	the domain structure in a visual format.
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