Subject: [PATCH] sched/rt: Don't try push tasks if there are none.
From: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2023 17:26:48 +0200

I have a RT task X at a high priority and cyclictest on each CPU with
lower priority than X's. If X is active and each CPU wakes their own
cylictest thread then it ends in a longer rto_push storm.
A random CPU determines via balance_rt() that the CPU on which X is
running needs to push tasks. X has the highest priority, cyclictest is
next in line so there is nothing that can be done since the task with
the higher priority is not touched.

tell_cpu_to_push() increments rto_loop_next and schedules
rto_push_irq_work_func() on X's CPU. The other CPUs also increment the
loop counter and do the same. Once rto_push_irq_work_func() is active it
does nothing because it has _no_ pushable tasks on its runqueue. Then
checks rto_next_cpu() and decides to queue irq_work on the local CPU
because another CPU requested a push by incrementing the counter.

I have traces where ~30 CPUs request this ~3 times each before it
finally ends. This greatly increases X's runtime while X isn't making
much progress.

Teach rto_next_cpu() to only return CPUs which also have tasks on their
runqueue which can be pushed away. This does not reduce the
tell_cpu_to_push() invocations (rto_loop_next counter increments) but
reduces the amount of issued rto_push_irq_work_func() if nothing can be
done. As the result the overloaded CPU is blocked less often.

There are still cases where the "same job" is repeated several times
(for instance the current CPU needs to resched but didn't yet because
the irq-work is repeated a few times and so the old task remains on the
CPU) but the majority of request end in tell_cpu_to_push() before an IPI
is issued.

Reviewed-by: "Steven Rostedt (Google)" <[email-masked]>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email-masked]
Signed-off-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <[email-masked]>
---
 kernel/sched/rt.c |    5 ++++-
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

Index: linux-6.8.2-rt10/kernel/sched/rt.c
===================================================================
--- linux-6.8.2-rt10.orig/kernel/sched/rt.c
+++ linux-6.8.2-rt10/kernel/sched/rt.c
@@ -2194,8 +2194,11 @@ static int rto_next_cpu(struct root_doma
 
 		rd->rto_cpu = cpu;
 
-		if (cpu < nr_cpu_ids)
+		if (cpu < nr_cpu_ids) {
+			if (!has_pushable_tasks(cpu_rq(cpu)))
+				continue;
 			return cpu;
+		}
 
 		rd->rto_cpu = -1;