cpufreq: schedutil: Make iowait boost more energy efficient

Currently the iowait_boost feature in schedutil makes the frequency
go to max on iowait wakeups.  This feature was added to handle a case
that Peter described where the throughput of operations involving
continuous I/O requests [1] is reduced due to running at a lower
frequency, however the lower throughput itself causes utilization to
be low and hence causing frequency to be low hence its "stuck".

Instead of going to max, its also possible to achieve the same effect
by ramping up to max if there are repeated in_iowait wakeups
happening. This patch is an attempt to do that. We start from a lower
frequency (policy->min) and double the boost for every consecutive
iowait update until we reach the maximum iowait boost frequency
(iowait_boost_max).

I ran a synthetic test (continuous O_DIRECT writes in a loop) on an
x86 machine with intel_pstate in passive mode using schedutil.  In
this test the iowait_boost value ramped from 800MHz to 4GHz in 60ms.
The patch achieves the desired improved throughput as the existing
behavior.

[1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9735885/

Suggested-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Suggested-by: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Joel Fernandes <joelaf@google.com>
Acked-by: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>

1 files changed, 32 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/sched/cpufreq_schedutil.c b/kernel/sched/cpufreq_schedutil.c
index 29a397067ffa..148844a995a8 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/cpufreq_schedutil.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/cpufreq_schedutil.c
@@ -53,6 +53,7 @@ struct sugov_cpu {
         struct update_util_data update_util;
         struct sugov_policy *sg_policy;
 
+        bool iowait_boost_pending;
         unsigned long iowait_boost;
         unsigned long iowait_boost_max;
         u64 last_update;
@@ -169,30 +170,54 @@ static void sugov_set_iowait_boost(struct sugov_cpu *sg_cpu, u64 time,
                                    unsigned int flags)
 {
         if (flags & SCHED_CPUFREQ_IOWAIT) {
-                sg_cpu->iowait_boost = sg_cpu->iowait_boost_max;
+                if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending)
+                        return;
+
+                sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending = true;
+
+                if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost) {
+                        sg_cpu->iowait_boost <<= 1;
+                        if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost > sg_cpu->iowait_boost_max)
+                                sg_cpu->iowait_boost = sg_cpu->iowait_boost_max;
+                } else {
+                        sg_cpu->iowait_boost = sg_cpu->sg_policy->policy->min;
+                }
         } else if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost) {
                 s64 delta_ns = time - sg_cpu->last_update;
 
                 /* Clear iowait_boost if the CPU apprears to have been idle. */
-                if (delta_ns > TICK_NSEC)
+                if (delta_ns > TICK_NSEC) {
                         sg_cpu->iowait_boost = 0;
+                        sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending = false;
+                }
         }
 }
 
 static void sugov_iowait_boost(struct sugov_cpu *sg_cpu, unsigned long *util,
                                unsigned long *max)
 {
-        unsigned long boost_util = sg_cpu->iowait_boost;
-        unsigned long boost_max = sg_cpu->iowait_boost_max;
+        unsigned long boost_util, boost_max;
 
-        if (!boost_util)
+        if (!sg_cpu->iowait_boost)
                 return;
 
+        if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending) {
+                sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending = false;
+        } else {
+                sg_cpu->iowait_boost >>= 1;
+                if (sg_cpu->iowait_boost < sg_cpu->sg_policy->policy->min) {
+                        sg_cpu->iowait_boost = 0;
+                        return;
+                }
+        }
+
+        boost_util = sg_cpu->iowait_boost;
+        boost_max = sg_cpu->iowait_boost_max;
+
         if (*util * boost_max < *max * boost_util) {
                 *util = boost_util;
                 *max = boost_max;
         }
-        sg_cpu->iowait_boost >>= 1;
 }
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_NO_HZ_COMMON
@@ -264,6 +289,7 @@ static unsigned int sugov_next_freq_shared(struct sugov_cpu *sg_cpu, u64 time)
                 delta_ns = time - j_sg_cpu->last_update;
                 if (delta_ns > TICK_NSEC) {
                         j_sg_cpu->iowait_boost = 0;
+                        j_sg_cpu->iowait_boost_pending = false;
                         continue;
                 }
                 if (j_sg_cpu->flags & SCHED_CPUFREQ_RT_DL)