Re: 2.6.11, IDE: Strange scheduling behaviour: high-pri RT process not scheduled?

[Mark Hahn <hahn@physics.mcmaster.ca>]

> I've written a small test program which enables periodic RTC interrupts 
> at 8192 Hz and then goes into a loop reading /dev/rtc and collecting 
> timing statistics (using the rdtscl macro).

straightforward test, used for many years in the linux community
(I claim to have been the first to publish it on lkml ;)

> The test system runs a 2.6.11 kernel (no SMP) on a Pentium3 500 MHz 
> embedded hardware.

which probably has memory bandwidth of at most a couple hundred MB/s,
which is really horrible by modern standards.

> However, things break seriously when exercising the CF card in parallel 
> (e.g. with a dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/null):
> 
> * The rtc *interrupt handler* is delayed for up to 250 *micro*seconds. 
> This is very bad for my purpose, but easy to explain: It is roughly the 
> time needed to transfer 512 Bytes from a CF card which can transfer 2 
> Mbyte/sec, and obviously, the CPU blocks all interrupts while making pio
> 
> transfers. (Why? Is this really necessary?)

even with -u1, isn't there still a softirq queue that will delay the wakeup
of your user-space tester?

> * The *test program* is regularly blocked for 63 *milli*seconds, 
> sometimes for up to 300 *milli*seconds, which is absolutely
> unacceptable.

guessing that's VM housekeeping.

> Now the big question:
> *** Why doesn't my rt test program get *any* CPU for 63 jiffies? ***
> (the system ticks at 1000 HZ)

because it's user-space.  the 'rt' is a bit of a misnomer - it's merely
a higher priority, less preemptable job.

> * The dd program obviously gets some CPU regularly (because it copies 2 
> MB/s, and because no other program could cause the 1 % user CPU load). 
> The dd runs at normal shell scheduling priority, so it should be 
> preempted immediately by my test program!

out of curiosity, does running it with "nice -n 19" change anything?

> 2.) Using a realtime-preempt-2.6.12-rc1-V0.7.41-11 kernel with
> PREEMPT_RT:
>     If my test program runs at rtpri 99, the problem is gone: It is 
>     scheduled within 30 microseconds after the rtc interrupt.
>     If my test program runs at rtpri 1, it still suffers from delays 
>     in the 30 to 300 millisecond range.

so your problem is solved, no?

also, did you try a (plain) preemptable kernel?

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