Use scx_stats instead of prometheus for stats reporting. This has a few
advantages:
- Stats metadata can be defined more succinctly.
- Natural support for nesting statistics which will be useful in making
scheduler components composable.
- Support for multiple programmable readers where each reader can use their
own reading interval.
- Built-in stats help message generation.
- Openmetrics integration is still available through
scx_stats/scripts/scxstats_to_openmetrics.py.
Update libbpf-rs & libbpf-cargo to 0.24. Among other things, generated
skeletons now contain directly accessible map and program objects, no
longer necessitating the use of accessor methods. As a result, the risk
for mutability conflicts is reduced greatly.
Signed-off-by: Daniel Müller <deso@posteo.net>
sched_ext is about to be merged upstream. There are some compatibility
breaking changes and we're making the current sched_ext/for-6.11
1edab907b57d ("sched_ext/scx_qmap: Pick idle CPU for direct dispatch on
!wakeup enqueues") the baseline.
Tag everything except scx_mitosis as 1.0.0. As scx_mitosis is still in early
development and is currently temporarily disabled, only the patchlevel is
bumped.
Overview
========
This scheduler is derived from scx_rustland, but it is fully implemented
in BFP with minimal user-space Rust part to process command line
options, collect metrics and logs out scheduling statistics.
Unlike scx_rustland, all scheduling decisions are made by the BPF
component.
Motivation
==========
The primary goal of this scheduler is to act as a performance baseline
for comparison with scx_rustland, allowing for a better assessment of
the overhead caused by kernel/user-space interactions.
It can also be used to deploy prototypes initially tested in the
scx_rustland scheduler. In fact, this scheduler is expected to
outperform scx_rustland, due to the elimitation of the kernel/user-space
overhead.
Scheduling policy
=================
scx_bpfland is a vruntime-based sched_ext scheduler that prioritizes
interactive workloads. Its scheduling policy closely mirrors
scx_rustland, but it has been re-implemented in BPF with some small
adjustments.
Tasks are categorized as either interactive or regular based on their
average rate of voluntary context switches per second: tasks that exceed
a specific voluntary context switch threshold are classified as
interactive.
Interactive tasks are prioritized in a higher-priority DSQ, while
regular tasks are placed in a lower-priority DSQ. Within each queue,
tasks are sorted based on their weighted runtime, using the built-in scx
vtime ordering capabilities (scx_bpf_dispatch_vtime()).
Moreover, each task gets a time slice budget. When a task is dispatched,
it receives a time slice equivalent to the remaining unused portion of
its previously allocated time slice (with a minimum threshold applied).
This gives latency-sensitive workloads more chances to exceed their time
slice when needed to perform short bursts of CPU activity without being
interrupted (i.e., real-time audio encoding / decoding workloads).
Results
=======
According to the initial test results, using the same benchmark "playing
a videogame while recompiling the kernel", this scheduler seems to
provide a +5% improvement in the frames-per-second (fps) compared to
scx_rustland, with video games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Counter-Strike 2
and Baldur's Gate 3.
Initial test results indicate that this scheduler offers around a +5%
improvement in frames-per-second (fps) compared to scx_rustland when
using the benchmark "playing a video game while recompiling the kernel".
This improvement was observed in games such as Cyberpunk 2077,
Counter-Strike 2, and Baldur's Gate 3.
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <andrea.righi@canonical.com>
