Re: HRT proposal (on top of timeofday and soft-timer rework)

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Nishanth Aravamudan wrote:
George,

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Sorry for the long delay in my
reply! I hope you have seen my new patch, which tries to accommodate your
suggestions. I also have some more pseudo code for you! (read the new
code before replying to my old comments, since most of them no longer
apply).

On 08.06.2005 [16:10:09 -0700], George Anzinger wrote:

~
I am most concerned about MMAX_HRT_REQ. The HR timer list is an ordered list and if kept small a simple O(N/2) list structure works fine. If MMAX_HRT_REQ get too large, this assumption fails and we will have list access timing issues. In looking at the structure for this list in the current patch, I concluded that more complex list structures may have a lower order but also carry a higher fixed cost. In other words the access time is:

FIXED_OVERHEAD+O(*)

Once you move away from the simple O(N/2) structure into RB trees, for example, the FIXED_OVERHEAD part of the access time goes up so the pay out for small N is just not there. For this reason, we want to keep the HR timer list small which means, in your case, keeping MMAX_HRT_REQ as small as possible.


I think we have found a reasonable way to avoid the risk of this
complexity (we being myself, Darren Hart and John Stultz, both of whom I
much of these ideas to).

OK, here is the new pseudo code, finally! When I refer to
unchanged/identical code, I mean relative to mainline, not to my
previous pseudo code.

-----------------------------------------------

struct timer_list
	/* keep all existing fields and add ... */
	nsec_t expires_nsecs;

#define TIMER_MAGIC		0x4b87ad6e	/* in the existing code */
#define HRTIMER_MAGIC		0x4b87ad6f	/* added, and now we can mask w/ ...*/
#define HRTIMER_MAGIC_MASK	0x1		/* added, the only bit
						 * different between LR and HR magic
						 * fields */

init_hrtimer(timer)
	/* identical to init_timer() except ... */
	timer->magic = HRTIMER_MAGIC

set_timer_nsecs()
	/* identical except ... */
	if (timer->magic & HRTIMER_MAGIC_MASK)
		notify hr-subsytem that a new hrtimer has been added (if
		it's expires is before the next interrupt?)

We will adjust the timer expiration alogrithm as follows (currently this
is in run_timer_softirq() / __run_timers()). This callback sequence will
be executed on *both* the low-res and high-res soft-timer interrupt!:

soft_timer_callback:
  nsec_t now_nsecs = do_monotonic_clock()
  unsigned long now_timerintervals =
  	nsecs_to_timerintervals_floor(now_nsecs)
  __run_timers(base, now_timerintervals) /* catch up *all* timers previous
					    to the current interval */
				      	/* unless we've missed ticks,
					   this will do nothing if this
					   is a high-res interrupt */
					/* maybe extend this function to
					   return the time of the next
					   low-res interrupt (VST) */ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
  nsec_t next_hrt_interrupt = __run_hrtimers(now_nsecs)
						/* alogrithm below */
						/* and this should,
						   likewise, do nothing
						   in the low-res case
						 */
  schedule_hrt_interrupt(next_hrt_interrupt) /* interact with h/w */

Depending on how long soft_timer_callback takes to run, we may actually
need to put it in a loop, to catch any reprogramming the interrupt
source to go off right now

__run_hrtimers(nsec_t now_nsecs)
	this function *must* be run after __run_timers() with
		nsecs_to_timerintervals_floor(now_nsecs), thus
		guaranteeing all soft-timers before that converted value
		have already been expired
	traverse the current bucket of timers, expiring *all* timers
		with timer->expires_nsecs < now_nsecs
	store the expires_nsecs field of the first high-res timer seen
		satisfying timer->expires_nsecs > now_nsecs
		if no such timer is found, keep checking up to
			HZ_to_timerintervals(2) intervals away from now
			(2 ticks is adjustable, I suppose) (anything
			further may be too time-consuming / unnecessary)
		if a satisfying timer is found, return
			timer->expires_nsecs, the next hrt interrupt's
			time
		if not, return 0 (none found)

This fixes what? It seems to me that you still have the possibility of time inversion between the two. Also, unless you put the timers in the list in sorted order, there may be inversion within the HR group.

Lets step back a few steps...

There are a couple of issues I think need to be explored here.

First is the whole notion of moving away from the jiffie. For better or worse, the jiffie ~= 1/HZ, is visible in user land. But, and I think, more importantly, it is tuned to the hardware in that it is currently defined as the best the hardware can do to come up with ticks at a HZ per second rate. In the case where the hardware can not exactly match a 1/HZ rate (as for HZ=1000), the jiffie is changed to what the hardware can do. In your timer list you are choosing buckets (apparently) based on the ease of calculation of the interval given a nanosecond request. I have not done the whole conversion overhead analisis on this choice (it should be done), but the hard fact is that the timer list is processed on interrupt and _should_ be set up to match what the hardware can do.

So now the issue of what "low res" resolution is comes up. Is this resolution arbitrary or is it exactly what you are calling a timerinterval? If I make a request for a low res timer that is to repeat at a 1 nanosecond rate, the system is to set the repeat rate to the resolution (round up according to the standard). Further, I can read this value either via posix_getres() or by timer_gettime() so the resolution is visible from user land. I don't see any thing in your code (as yet) to set this resolution. In any case, it is a fixed number. It seems to me that you have a choice here of either "timerintervals" or "the hardware interrupt rate" or "1/HZ". If it is any thing other than the hardware interrupt rate, the actual expire times will drift around within this resolution (what customers call jitter) due to the drifting of the hardware interrupt WRT the resolution.

I notice that you are still using the cascade timer list. This list is ideal for then normal timer insert, remove, expire operations. Even timers that are inserted in the cascade area are _usually_ removed prior to being the subject of a cascade. On the other hand, it is a real bear of a list to find the "next" timer to expire. The VST operation, thus, should be reserved for the idle task and NOT depend on any thing one does in the normal course of handling timers.

Now, back to your proposal. What you have is very much like the structure that I abandoned early this year, i.e. an integrated HR and LR timer list. The reasons for my moving away from it are that it requires that timers in each bucket be ordered, thus what was an O(1) insert becomes O(N/M*2) (where M is the number of buckets). Further, this overhead is done at timer insert time and introduces additional overhead even if there are no HR timers in the given bucket. It also adds complexity to both the add_timer and run_timer code. It also does the full run_timer overhead for each HR timer interrupt, said overhead possibly being higher than code to _just_ handle a simple HR this period only list. By not ordering the timers until just prior to expire time, most of those that will never expire will have been pulled from the list already, thus reducing the ordering overhead. There are also complexity issues around requests for a timer that has already expired that I handled better with the dual list approach.

I have gotten feedback on both the before and after HRT code with the before being negative and the after positive.

Could you remind us of why you are redoing the timers? What is the objective of this?
~

--
George Anzinger   [email protected]
HRT (High-res-timers):  http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-res-timers/
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