The guide that is currently available for Fedora sched-ext is outdated. To remedy this,
I have opted to update the guide to use CachyOS's kernel that is also available on Fedora.
The scx schedulers that are available on Fedora's repositories are also outdated and doesn't work
with the current patchset. I have also updated the scheduler installation to use our package
in the CachyOS Addons COPR.
Signed-off-by: Eric Naim <dnaim@proton.me>
After updating scx_layered to be topology aware the nr_cpus field on the
layer was not being updated properly. Update layer growing/shrinking
logic to correctly update the nr_cpus count.
Signed-off-by: Daniel Hodges <hodges.daniel.scott@gmail.com>
- This makes the scheduler side simpler and allows on-demand monitoring.
- OpenMetrics support is dropped for now. Will add a generic tool for it.
- This is a naive conversion. Will be further refined.
scx_layered no longer prints statistics by default. To watch statistics, run
`scx_layered --monitor` while the scheduler is running.
scx_stat is a statistics reporting library with the following goals:
- Minimal boilerplate code. Statistics are defined as a regular rust struct
which can contain integers, floats, strings, structs, and array or
BTreeMap of them. The struct and each field can be annotated using the
"stat" attribute. The "Stat" derive macro generates the necessary
metadata.
- On-demand reporting. ScxStatServer implements a UNIX domain socket server
which communicates using a simple json protocol. Stat structs can be added
to the server with closures to output them. There can be any number of
readers. ScxStatServer can be queried for the metadata of all stat structs
that it may report so that a generic tool can be written to pipe the
reported statistics to other frameworks (e.g. openmetrics).
- The interface protocol is pretty simple and it isn't difficult to interact
directly in json. ScxStatClient is provided to further simplify client
implementation.
- See rust/scx_stat/examples/{server,client}.rs for usage.
Add a github action to run
[`veristat`](https://github.com/libbpf/veristat) during PRs and merges.
This uses a [action cache](https://github.com/actions/cache) to store
the veristat values when a PR is merged.
Signed-off-by: Daniel Hodges <hodges.daniel.scott@gmail.com>
Allow to specify a primary scheduling domain via the new command line
option `--primary-domain CPUMASK`, where CPUMASK can be a hex number of
arbitrary length, representing the CPUs assigned to the domain.
If this option is not specified the scheduler will use all the available
CPUs in the system as primary domain (no behavior change).
Otherwise, if a primary scheduling domain is defined, the scheduler will
try to dispatch tasks only to the CPUs assigned to the primary domain,
until these CPUs are saturated, at which point tasks may overflow to
other available CPUs.
This feature can be used to prioritize certain cores over others and it
can be really effective in systems with heterogeneous cores (e.g.,
hybrid systems with P-cores and E-cores).
== Example (hybrid architecture) ==
Hardware:
- Dell Precision 5480 with 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13800H
- 6 P-cores 0..5 with 2 CPUs each (CPU from 0..11)
- 8 E-cores 6..13 with 1 CPU each (CPU from 12..19)
== Test ==
WebGL application (https://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html):
this allows to generate a steady workload in the system without
over-saturating the CPUs.
Use different scheduler configurations:
- EEVDF (default)
- scx_bpfland using P-cores only (--primary-domain 0x00fff)
- scx_bpfland using E-cores only (--primary-domain 0xff000)
Measure performance (fps) and power consumption (W).
== Result ==
+-----+-----+------+-----+----------+
| min | max | avg | | |
| fps | fps | fps | stdev | power |
+-----------------+-----+-----+------+-------+--------+
| EEVDF | 28 | 34 | 31.0 | 1.73 | 3.5W |
| bpfland-p-cores | 33 | 34 | 33.5 | 0.29 | 3.5W |
| bpfland-e-cores | 25 | 26 | 25.5 | 0.29 | 2.2W |
+-----------------+-----+-----+------+-------+--------+
Using a primary scheduling domain of only P-cores with scx_bpfland
allows to achieve a more stable and predictable level of performance,
with an average of 33.5 fps and an error of ±0.5 fps.
In contrast, using EEVDF results in an average frame rate of 31.0 fps
with an error of ±3.0 fps, indicating slightly less consistency, due to
the fact that tasks are evenly distributed across all the cores in the
system (both slow and fast cores).
On the other hand, using a scheduling domain solely of E-cores with
scx_bpfland results in a lower average frame rate (25.5 fps), though it
maintains a stable performance (error of ±0.5 fps), but the power
consumption is also reduced, averaging 2.2W, compared to 3.5W with
either of the other configurations.
== Conclusion ==
In summary, with this change users have the flexibility to prioritize
scheduling on performance cores for better performance and consistency,
or prioritize energy efficient cores for reduced power consumption, on
hybrid architectures.
Moreover, this feature can also be used to minimize the number of cores
used by the scheduler, until they reach full capacity. This capability
can be useful for reducing power consumption even in homogeneous systems
or for conducting scheduling experiments with smaller sets of cores,
provided the system is not overcommitted.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <andrea.righi@linux.dev>
Abbreviate the statistics reported to stdout and remove the slice_ms
metric: this metric can be easily derived from slice_ns, slice_ns_min
and nr_wait, which is already reported to stdout.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <andrea.righi@linux.dev>
