[PATCH] more migration thread cleanups
I'm currently working on a node affine scheduler extension for NUMA machines and the load balancer behaves a bit different from the original. So after a few boot failures with those slowly booting 16 CPU IA64 machines I thought there must be a simpler solution than synchronizing and waiting for the load balancer: just let migration_CPU0 do what it is designed for. So my proposal is: - start all migration threads on CPU#0 - initialize migration_CPU0 (trivial, reliable, as it already is on the right CPU) - let all other migration threads use set_cpus_allowed() to get to the right place The only synchronization needed is the non-zero migration threads waiting for migration_CPU0 to start working, which it will, as it is already on the right CPU. This saves quite some lines of code. I first posted this to LKML on March 6th (BTW, the fix #1, too) and since then it was tested on several big NUMA platforms: 16 CPU NEC AzusA (IA64) (also known as HP rx....), up to 32 CPU SGI IA64, 16 CPU IBM NUMA-Q (IA32). No more lock-ups at boot since then. So I consider it working. There is another good reason for this approach: the integration of the CPU hotplug patch with the new scheduler becomes easier. One just needs to create the new migration thread, it will move itself to the right CPU without any additional magic (which you otherwise need because of the synchronizations which won't be there at hotplug). Kimi Suganuma in the neighboring cube is fiddling this out currently.
Showing
Please register or sign in to comment