nohz: Basic full dynticks interface

For extreme usecases such as Real Time or HPC, having
the ability to shutdown the tick when a single task runs
on a CPU is a desired feature:

* Reducing the amount of interrupts improves throughput
for CPU-bound tasks. The CPU is less distracted from its
real job, from an execution time and from the cache point
of views.

* This also improve latency response as we have less critical
sections.

Start with introducing a very simple interface to define
full dynticks CPU: use a boot time option defined cpumask
through the "nohz_extended=" kernel parameter. CPUs that
are part of this range will have their tick shutdown
whenever possible: provided they run a single task and
they don't do kernel activity that require the periodic
tick. These details will be later documented in
Documentation/*

An online CPU must be kept outside this range to handle the
timekeeping.

Suggested-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Chris Metcalf <cmetcalf@tilera.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: Geoff Levand <geoff@infradead.org>
Cc: Gilad Ben Yossef <gilad@benyossef.com>
Cc: Hakan Akkan <hakanakkan@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Kevin Hilman <khilman@linaro.org>
Cc: Li Zhong <zhong@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <namhyung.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 4609e81dbc37..231698feaddc 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -1913,6 +1913,12 @@ bytes respectively. Such letter suffixes can also be entirely omitted.
                         Valid arguments: on, off
                         Default: on
 
+        nohz_extended=  [KNL,BOOT]
+                        In kernels built with CONFIG_NO_HZ_EXTENDED=y, set
+                        the specified list of CPUs whose tick will be stopped
+                        whenever possible. You need to keep at least one online
+                        CPU outside the range to maintain the timekeeping.
+
         noiotrap        [SH] Disables trapped I/O port accesses.
 
         noirqdebug      [X86-32] Disables the code which attempts to detect and