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authorAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
committerAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
commit57f0f512b273f60d52568b8c6b77e17f5636edc0 (patch)
tree5e910f0e82173f4ef4f51111366a3f1299037a7b /Documentation/scheduler
Initial import
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/scheduler')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/00-INDEX18
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt248
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt347
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-arch.txt74
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.txt122
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt525
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-design-CFS.txt242
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-domains.txt77
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-nice-design.txt108
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt183
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-stats.txt154
11 files changed, 2098 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/00-INDEX b/Documentation/scheduler/00-INDEX
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..eccf7ad2e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/00-INDEX
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+00-INDEX
+ - this file.
+sched-arch.txt
+ - CPU Scheduler implementation hints for architecture specific code.
+sched-bwc.txt
+ - CFS bandwidth control overview.
+sched-design-CFS.txt
+ - goals, design and implementation of the Completely Fair Scheduler.
+sched-domains.txt
+ - information on scheduling domains.
+sched-nice-design.txt
+ - How and why the scheduler's nice levels are implemented.
+sched-rt-group.txt
+ - real-time group scheduling.
+sched-deadline.txt
+ - deadline scheduling.
+sched-stats.txt
+ - information on schedstats (Linux Scheduler Statistics).
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2622bc7a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,248 @@
+completions - wait for completion handling
+==========================================
+
+This document was originally written based on 3.18.0 (linux-next)
+
+Introduction:
+-------------
+
+If you have one or more threads of execution that must wait for some process
+to have reached a point or a specific state, completions can provide a
+race-free solution to this problem. Semantically they are somewhat like a
+pthread_barrier and have similar use-cases.
+
+Completions are a code synchronization mechanism which is preferable to any
+misuse of locks. Any time you think of using yield() or some quirky
+msleep(1) loop to allow something else to proceed, you probably want to
+look into using one of the wait_for_completion*() calls instead. The
+advantage of using completions is clear intent of the code, but also more
+efficient code as both threads can continue until the result is actually
+needed.
+
+Completions are built on top of the generic event infrastructure in Linux,
+with the event reduced to a simple flag (appropriately called "done") in
+struct completion that tells the waiting threads of execution if they
+can continue safely.
+
+As completions are scheduling related, the code is found in
+kernel/sched/completion.c - for details on completion design and
+implementation see completions-design.txt
+
+
+Usage:
+------
+
+There are three parts to using completions, the initialization of the
+struct completion, the waiting part through a call to one of the variants of
+wait_for_completion() and the signaling side through a call to complete()
+or complete_all(). Further there are some helper functions for checking the
+state of completions.
+
+To use completions one needs to include <linux/completion.h> and
+create a variable of type struct completion. The structure used for
+handling of completions is:
+
+ struct completion {
+ unsigned int done;
+ wait_queue_head_t wait;
+ };
+
+providing the wait queue to place tasks on for waiting and the flag for
+indicating the state of affairs.
+
+Completions should be named to convey the intent of the waiter. A good
+example is:
+
+ wait_for_completion(&early_console_added);
+
+ complete(&early_console_added);
+
+Good naming (as always) helps code readability.
+
+
+Initializing completions:
+-------------------------
+
+Initialization of dynamically allocated completions, often embedded in
+other structures, is done with:
+
+ void init_completion(&done);
+
+Initialization is accomplished by initializing the wait queue and setting
+the default state to "not available", that is, "done" is set to 0.
+
+The re-initialization function, reinit_completion(), simply resets the
+done element to "not available", thus again to 0, without touching the
+wait queue. Calling init_completion() twice on the same completion object is
+most likely a bug as it re-initializes the queue to an empty queue and
+enqueued tasks could get "lost" - use reinit_completion() in that case.
+
+For static declaration and initialization, macros are available. These are:
+
+ static DECLARE_COMPLETION(setup_done)
+
+used for static declarations in file scope. Within functions the static
+initialization should always use:
+
+ DECLARE_COMPLETION_ONSTACK(setup_done)
+
+suitable for automatic/local variables on the stack and will make lockdep
+happy. Note also that one needs to make *sure* the completion passed to
+work threads remains in-scope, and no references remain to on-stack data
+when the initiating function returns.
+
+Using on-stack completions for code that calls any of the _timeout or
+_interruptible/_killable variants is not advisable as they will require
+additional synchronization to prevent the on-stack completion object in
+the timeout/signal cases from going out of scope. Consider using dynamically
+allocated completions when intending to use the _interruptible/_killable
+or _timeout variants of wait_for_completion().
+
+
+Waiting for completions:
+------------------------
+
+For a thread of execution to wait for some concurrent work to finish, it
+calls wait_for_completion() on the initialized completion structure.
+A typical usage scenario is:
+
+ struct completion setup_done;
+ init_completion(&setup_done);
+ initialize_work(...,&setup_done,...)
+
+ /* run non-dependent code */ /* do setup */
+
+ wait_for_completion(&setup_done); complete(setup_done)
+
+This is not implying any temporal order on wait_for_completion() and the
+call to complete() - if the call to complete() happened before the call
+to wait_for_completion() then the waiting side simply will continue
+immediately as all dependencies are satisfied if not it will block until
+completion is signaled by complete().
+
+Note that wait_for_completion() is calling spin_lock_irq()/spin_unlock_irq(),
+so it can only be called safely when you know that interrupts are enabled.
+Calling it from hard-irq or irqs-off atomic contexts will result in
+hard-to-detect spurious enabling of interrupts.
+
+wait_for_completion():
+
+ void wait_for_completion(struct completion *done):
+
+The default behavior is to wait without a timeout and to mark the task as
+uninterruptible. wait_for_completion() and its variants are only safe
+in process context (as they can sleep) but not in atomic context,
+interrupt context, with disabled irqs. or preemption is disabled - see also
+try_wait_for_completion() below for handling completion in atomic/interrupt
+context.
+
+As all variants of wait_for_completion() can (obviously) block for a long
+time, you probably don't want to call this with held mutexes.
+
+
+Variants available:
+-------------------
+
+The below variants all return status and this status should be checked in
+most(/all) cases - in cases where the status is deliberately not checked you
+probably want to make a note explaining this (e.g. see
+arch/arm/kernel/smp.c:__cpu_up()).
+
+A common problem that occurs is to have unclean assignment of return types,
+so care should be taken with assigning return-values to variables of proper
+type. Checking for the specific meaning of return values also has been found
+to be quite inaccurate e.g. constructs like
+if (!wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(...)) would execute the same
+code path for successful completion and for the interrupted case - which is
+probably not what you want.
+
+ int wait_for_completion_interruptible(struct completion *done)
+
+This function marks the task TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a signal was received
+while waiting it will return -ERESTARTSYS; 0 otherwise.
+
+ unsigned long wait_for_completion_timeout(struct completion *done,
+ unsigned long timeout)
+
+The task is marked as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE and will wait at most 'timeout'
+(in jiffies). If timeout occurs it returns 0 else the remaining time in
+jiffies (but at least 1). Timeouts are preferably calculated with
+msecs_to_jiffies() or usecs_to_jiffies(). If the returned timeout value is
+deliberately ignored a comment should probably explain why (e.g. see
+drivers/mfd/wm8350-core.c wm8350_read_auxadc())
+
+ long wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(
+ struct completion *done, unsigned long timeout)
+
+This function passes a timeout in jiffies and marks the task as
+TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a signal was received it will return -ERESTARTSYS;
+otherwise it returns 0 if the completion timed out or the remaining time in
+jiffies if completion occurred.
+
+Further variants include _killable which uses TASK_KILLABLE as the
+designated tasks state and will return -ERESTARTSYS if it is interrupted or
+else 0 if completion was achieved. There is a _timeout variant as well:
+
+ long wait_for_completion_killable(struct completion *done)
+ long wait_for_completion_killable_timeout(struct completion *done,
+ unsigned long timeout)
+
+The _io variants wait_for_completion_io() behave the same as the non-_io
+variants, except for accounting waiting time as waiting on IO, which has
+an impact on how the task is accounted in scheduling stats.
+
+ void wait_for_completion_io(struct completion *done)
+ unsigned long wait_for_completion_io_timeout(struct completion *done
+ unsigned long timeout)
+
+
+Signaling completions:
+----------------------
+
+A thread that wants to signal that the conditions for continuation have been
+achieved calls complete() to signal exactly one of the waiters that it can
+continue.
+
+ void complete(struct completion *done)
+
+or calls complete_all() to signal all current and future waiters.
+
+ void complete_all(struct completion *done)
+
+The signaling will work as expected even if completions are signaled before
+a thread starts waiting. This is achieved by the waiter "consuming"
+(decrementing) the done element of struct completion. Waiting threads
+wakeup order is the same in which they were enqueued (FIFO order).
+
+If complete() is called multiple times then this will allow for that number
+of waiters to continue - each call to complete() will simply increment the
+done element. Calling complete_all() multiple times is a bug though. Both
+complete() and complete_all() can be called in hard-irq/atomic context safely.
+
+There only can be one thread calling complete() or complete_all() on a
+particular struct completion at any time - serialized through the wait
+queue spinlock. Any such concurrent calls to complete() or complete_all()
+probably are a design bug.
+
+Signaling completion from hard-irq context is fine as it will appropriately
+lock with spin_lock_irqsave/spin_unlock_irqrestore and it will never sleep.
+
+
+try_wait_for_completion()/completion_done():
+--------------------------------------------
+
+The try_wait_for_completion() function will not put the thread on the wait
+queue but rather returns false if it would need to enqueue (block) the thread,
+else it consumes one posted completion and returns true.
+
+ bool try_wait_for_completion(struct completion *done)
+
+Finally, to check the state of a completion without changing it in any way,
+call completion_done(), which returns false if there are no posted
+completions that were not yet consumed by waiters (implying that there are
+waiters) and true otherwise;
+
+ bool completion_done(struct completion *done)
+
+Both try_wait_for_completion() and completion_done() are safe to be called in
+hard-irq or atomic context.
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c10d95601
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-BFS.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,347 @@
+BFS - The Brain Fuck Scheduler by Con Kolivas.
+
+Goals.
+
+The goal of the Brain Fuck Scheduler, referred to as BFS from here on, is to
+completely do away with the complex designs of the past for the cpu process
+scheduler and instead implement one that is very simple in basic design.
+The main focus of BFS is to achieve excellent desktop interactivity and
+responsiveness without heuristics and tuning knobs that are difficult to
+understand, impossible to model and predict the effect of, and when tuned to
+one workload cause massive detriment to another.
+
+
+Design summary.
+
+BFS is best described as a single runqueue, O(n) lookup, earliest effective
+virtual deadline first design, loosely based on EEVDF (earliest eligible virtual
+deadline first) and my previous Staircase Deadline scheduler. Each component
+shall be described in order to understand the significance of, and reasoning for
+it. The codebase when the first stable version was released was approximately
+9000 lines less code than the existing mainline linux kernel scheduler (in
+2.6.31). This does not even take into account the removal of documentation and
+the cgroups code that is not used.
+
+Design reasoning.
+
+The single runqueue refers to the queued but not running processes for the
+entire system, regardless of the number of CPUs. The reason for going back to
+a single runqueue design is that once multiple runqueues are introduced,
+per-CPU or otherwise, there will be complex interactions as each runqueue will
+be responsible for the scheduling latency and fairness of the tasks only on its
+own runqueue, and to achieve fairness and low latency across multiple CPUs, any
+advantage in throughput of having CPU local tasks causes other disadvantages.
+This is due to requiring a very complex balancing system to at best achieve some
+semblance of fairness across CPUs and can only maintain relatively low latency
+for tasks bound to the same CPUs, not across them. To increase said fairness
+and latency across CPUs, the advantage of local runqueue locking, which makes
+for better scalability, is lost due to having to grab multiple locks.
+
+A significant feature of BFS is that all accounting is done purely based on CPU
+used and nowhere is sleep time used in any way to determine entitlement or
+interactivity. Interactivity "estimators" that use some kind of sleep/run
+algorithm are doomed to fail to detect all interactive tasks, and to falsely tag
+tasks that aren't interactive as being so. The reason for this is that it is
+close to impossible to determine that when a task is sleeping, whether it is
+doing it voluntarily, as in a userspace application waiting for input in the
+form of a mouse click or otherwise, or involuntarily, because it is waiting for
+another thread, process, I/O, kernel activity or whatever. Thus, such an
+estimator will introduce corner cases, and more heuristics will be required to
+cope with those corner cases, introducing more corner cases and failed
+interactivity detection and so on. Interactivity in BFS is built into the design
+by virtue of the fact that tasks that are waking up have not used up their quota
+of CPU time, and have earlier effective deadlines, thereby making it very likely
+they will preempt any CPU bound task of equivalent nice level. See below for
+more information on the virtual deadline mechanism. Even if they do not preempt
+a running task, because the rr interval is guaranteed to have a bound upper
+limit on how long a task will wait for, it will be scheduled within a timeframe
+that will not cause visible interface jitter.
+
+
+Design details.
+
+Task insertion.
+
+BFS inserts tasks into each relevant queue as an O(1) insertion into a double
+linked list. On insertion, *every* running queue is checked to see if the newly
+queued task can run on any idle queue, or preempt the lowest running task on the
+system. This is how the cross-CPU scheduling of BFS achieves significantly lower
+latency per extra CPU the system has. In this case the lookup is, in the worst
+case scenario, O(n) where n is the number of CPUs on the system.
+
+Data protection.
+
+BFS has one single lock protecting the process local data of every task in the
+global queue. Thus every insertion, removal and modification of task data in the
+global runqueue needs to grab the global lock. However, once a task is taken by
+a CPU, the CPU has its own local data copy of the running process' accounting
+information which only that CPU accesses and modifies (such as during a
+timer tick) thus allowing the accounting data to be updated lockless. Once a
+CPU has taken a task to run, it removes it from the global queue. Thus the
+global queue only ever has, at most,
+
+ (number of tasks requesting cpu time) - (number of logical CPUs) + 1
+
+tasks in the global queue. This value is relevant for the time taken to look up
+tasks during scheduling. This will increase if many tasks with CPU affinity set
+in their policy to limit which CPUs they're allowed to run on if they outnumber
+the number of CPUs. The +1 is because when rescheduling a task, the CPU's
+currently running task is put back on the queue. Lookup will be described after
+the virtual deadline mechanism is explained.
+
+Virtual deadline.
+
+The key to achieving low latency, scheduling fairness, and "nice level"
+distribution in BFS is entirely in the virtual deadline mechanism. The one
+tunable in BFS is the rr_interval, or "round robin interval". This is the
+maximum time two SCHED_OTHER (or SCHED_NORMAL, the common scheduling policy)
+tasks of the same nice level will be running for, or looking at it the other
+way around, the longest duration two tasks of the same nice level will be
+delayed for. When a task requests cpu time, it is given a quota (time_slice)
+equal to the rr_interval and a virtual deadline. The virtual deadline is
+offset from the current time in jiffies by this equation:
+
+ jiffies + (prio_ratio * rr_interval)
+
+The prio_ratio is determined as a ratio compared to the baseline of nice -20
+and increases by 10% per nice level. The deadline is a virtual one only in that
+no guarantee is placed that a task will actually be scheduled by this time, but
+it is used to compare which task should go next. There are three components to
+how a task is next chosen. First is time_slice expiration. If a task runs out
+of its time_slice, it is descheduled, the time_slice is refilled, and the
+deadline reset to that formula above. Second is sleep, where a task no longer
+is requesting CPU for whatever reason. The time_slice and deadline are _not_
+adjusted in this case and are just carried over for when the task is next
+scheduled. Third is preemption, and that is when a newly waking task is deemed
+higher priority than a currently running task on any cpu by virtue of the fact
+that it has an earlier virtual deadline than the currently running task. The
+earlier deadline is the key to which task is next chosen for the first and
+second cases. Once a task is descheduled, it is put back on the queue, and an
+O(n) lookup of all queued-but-not-running tasks is done to determine which has
+the earliest deadline and that task is chosen to receive CPU next.
+
+The CPU proportion of different nice tasks works out to be approximately the
+
+ (prio_ratio difference)^2
+
+The reason it is squared is that a task's deadline does not change while it is
+running unless it runs out of time_slice. Thus, even if the time actually
+passes the deadline of another task that is queued, it will not get CPU time
+unless the current running task deschedules, and the time "base" (jiffies) is
+constantly moving.
+
+Task lookup.
+
+BFS has 103 priority queues. 100 of these are dedicated to the static priority
+of realtime tasks, and the remaining 3 are, in order of best to worst priority,
+SCHED_ISO (isochronous), SCHED_NORMAL, and SCHED_IDLEPRIO (idle priority
+scheduling). When a task of these priorities is queued, a bitmap of running
+priorities is set showing which of these priorities has tasks waiting for CPU
+time. When a CPU is made to reschedule, the lookup for the next task to get
+CPU time is performed in the following way:
+
+First the bitmap is checked to see what static priority tasks are queued. If
+any realtime priorities are found, the corresponding queue is checked and the
+first task listed there is taken (provided CPU affinity is suitable) and lookup
+is complete. If the priority corresponds to a SCHED_ISO task, they are also
+taken in FIFO order (as they behave like SCHED_RR). If the priority corresponds
+to either SCHED_NORMAL or SCHED_IDLEPRIO, then the lookup becomes O(n). At this
+stage, every task in the runlist that corresponds to that priority is checked
+to see which has the earliest set deadline, and (provided it has suitable CPU
+affinity) it is taken off the runqueue and given the CPU. If a task has an
+expired deadline, it is taken and the rest of the lookup aborted (as they are
+chosen in FIFO order).
+
+Thus, the lookup is O(n) in the worst case only, where n is as described
+earlier, as tasks may be chosen before the whole task list is looked over.
+
+
+Scalability.
+
+The major limitations of BFS will be that of scalability, as the separate
+runqueue designs will have less lock contention as the number of CPUs rises.
+However they do not scale linearly even with separate runqueues as multiple
+runqueues will need to be locked concurrently on such designs to be able to
+achieve fair CPU balancing, to try and achieve some sort of nice-level fairness
+across CPUs, and to achieve low enough latency for tasks on a busy CPU when
+other CPUs would be more suited. BFS has the advantage that it requires no
+balancing algorithm whatsoever, as balancing occurs by proxy simply because
+all CPUs draw off the global runqueue, in priority and deadline order. Despite
+the fact that scalability is _not_ the prime concern of BFS, it both shows very
+good scalability to smaller numbers of CPUs and is likely a more scalable design
+at these numbers of CPUs.
+
+It also has some very low overhead scalability features built into the design
+when it has been deemed their overhead is so marginal that they're worth adding.
+The first is the local copy of the running process' data to the CPU it's running
+on to allow that data to be updated lockless where possible. Then there is
+deference paid to the last CPU a task was running on, by trying that CPU first
+when looking for an idle CPU to use the next time it's scheduled. Finally there
+is the notion of "sticky" tasks that are flagged when they are involuntarily
+descheduled, meaning they still want further CPU time. This sticky flag is
+used to bias heavily against those tasks being scheduled on a different CPU
+unless that CPU would be otherwise idle. When a cpu frequency governor is used
+that scales with CPU load, such as ondemand, sticky tasks are not scheduled
+on a different CPU at all, preferring instead to go idle. This means the CPU
+they were bound to is more likely to increase its speed while the other CPU
+will go idle, thus speeding up total task execution time and likely decreasing
+power usage. This is the only scenario where BFS will allow a CPU to go idle
+in preference to scheduling a task on the earliest available spare CPU.
+
+The real cost of migrating a task from one CPU to another is entirely dependant
+on the cache footprint of the task, how cache intensive the task is, how long
+it's been running on that CPU to take up the bulk of its cache, how big the CPU
+cache is, how fast and how layered the CPU cache is, how fast a context switch
+is... and so on. In other words, it's close to random in the real world where we
+do more than just one sole workload. The only thing we can be sure of is that
+it's not free. So BFS uses the principle that an idle CPU is a wasted CPU and
+utilising idle CPUs is more important than cache locality, and cache locality
+only plays a part after that.
+
+When choosing an idle CPU for a waking task, the cache locality is determined
+according to where the task last ran and then idle CPUs are ranked from best
+to worst to choose the most suitable idle CPU based on cache locality, NUMA
+node locality and hyperthread sibling business. They are chosen in the
+following preference (if idle):
+
+* Same core, idle or busy cache, idle threads
+* Other core, same cache, idle or busy cache, idle threads.
+* Same node, other CPU, idle cache, idle threads.
+* Same node, other CPU, busy cache, idle threads.
+* Same core, busy threads.
+* Other core, same cache, busy threads.
+* Same node, other CPU, busy threads.
+* Other node, other CPU, idle cache, idle threads.
+* Other node, other CPU, busy cache, idle threads.
+* Other node, other CPU, busy threads.
+
+This shows the SMT or "hyperthread" awareness in the design as well which will
+choose a real idle core first before a logical SMT sibling which already has
+tasks on the physical CPU.
+
+Early benchmarking of BFS suggested scalability dropped off at the 16 CPU mark.
+However this benchmarking was performed on an earlier design that was far less
+scalable than the current one so it's hard to know how scalable it is in terms
+of both CPUs (due to the global runqueue) and heavily loaded machines (due to
+O(n) lookup) at this stage. Note that in terms of scalability, the number of
+_logical_ CPUs matters, not the number of _physical_ CPUs. Thus, a dual (2x)
+quad core (4X) hyperthreaded (2X) machine is effectively a 16X. Newer benchmark
+results are very promising indeed, without needing to tweak any knobs, features
+or options. Benchmark contributions are most welcome.
+
+
+Features
+
+As the initial prime target audience for BFS was the average desktop user, it
+was designed to not need tweaking, tuning or have features set to obtain benefit
+from it. Thus the number of knobs and features has been kept to an absolute
+minimum and should not require extra user input for the vast majority of cases.
+There are precisely 2 tunables, and 2 extra scheduling policies. The rr_interval
+and iso_cpu tunables, and the SCHED_ISO and SCHED_IDLEPRIO policies. In addition
+to this, BFS also uses sub-tick accounting. What BFS does _not_ now feature is
+support for CGROUPS. The average user should neither need to know what these
+are, nor should they need to be using them to have good desktop behaviour.
+
+rr_interval
+
+There is only one "scheduler" tunable, the round robin interval. This can be
+accessed in
+
+ /proc/sys/kernel/rr_interval
+
+The value is in milliseconds, and the default value is set to 6ms. Valid values
+are from 1 to 1000. Decreasing the value will decrease latencies at the cost of
+decreasing throughput, while increasing it will improve throughput, but at the
+cost of worsening latencies. The accuracy of the rr interval is limited by HZ
+resolution of the kernel configuration. Thus, the worst case latencies are
+usually slightly higher than this actual value. BFS uses "dithering" to try and
+minimise the effect the Hz limitation has. The default value of 6 is not an
+arbitrary one. It is based on the fact that humans can detect jitter at
+approximately 7ms, so aiming for much lower latencies is pointless under most
+circumstances. It is worth noting this fact when comparing the latency
+performance of BFS to other schedulers. Worst case latencies being higher than
+7ms are far worse than average latencies not being in the microsecond range.
+Experimentation has shown that rr intervals being increased up to 300 can
+improve throughput but beyond that, scheduling noise from elsewhere prevents
+further demonstrable throughput.
+
+Isochronous scheduling.
+
+Isochronous scheduling is a unique scheduling policy designed to provide
+near-real-time performance to unprivileged (ie non-root) users without the
+ability to starve the machine indefinitely. Isochronous tasks (which means
+"same time") are set using, for example, the schedtool application like so:
+
+ schedtool -I -e amarok
+
+This will start the audio application "amarok" as SCHED_ISO. How SCHED_ISO works
+is that it has a priority level between true realtime tasks and SCHED_NORMAL
+which would allow them to preempt all normal tasks, in a SCHED_RR fashion (ie,
+if multiple SCHED_ISO tasks are running, they purely round robin at rr_interval
+rate). However if ISO tasks run for more than a tunable finite amount of time,
+they are then demoted back to SCHED_NORMAL scheduling. This finite amount of
+time is the percentage of _total CPU_ available across the machine, configurable
+as a percentage in the following "resource handling" tunable (as opposed to a
+scheduler tunable):
+
+ /proc/sys/kernel/iso_cpu
+
+and is set to 70% by default. It is calculated over a rolling 5 second average
+Because it is the total CPU available, it means that on a multi CPU machine, it
+is possible to have an ISO task running as realtime scheduling indefinitely on
+just one CPU, as the other CPUs will be available. Setting this to 100 is the
+equivalent of giving all users SCHED_RR access and setting it to 0 removes the
+ability to run any pseudo-realtime tasks.
+
+A feature of BFS is that it detects when an application tries to obtain a
+realtime policy (SCHED_RR or SCHED_FIFO) and the caller does not have the
+appropriate privileges to use those policies. When it detects this, it will
+give the task SCHED_ISO policy instead. Thus it is transparent to the user.
+Because some applications constantly set their policy as well as their nice
+level, there is potential for them to undo the override specified by the user
+on the command line of setting the policy to SCHED_ISO. To counter this, once
+a task has been set to SCHED_ISO policy, it needs superuser privileges to set
+it back to SCHED_NORMAL. This will ensure the task remains ISO and all child
+processes and threads will also inherit the ISO policy.
+
+Idleprio scheduling.
+
+Idleprio scheduling is a scheduling policy designed to give out CPU to a task
+_only_ when the CPU would be otherwise idle. The idea behind this is to allow
+ultra low priority tasks to be run in the background that have virtually no
+effect on the foreground tasks. This is ideally suited to distributed computing
+clients (like setiathome, folding, mprime etc) but can also be used to start
+a video encode or so on without any slowdown of other tasks. To avoid this
+policy from grabbing shared resources and holding them indefinitely, if it
+detects a state where the task is waiting on I/O, the machine is about to
+suspend to ram and so on, it will transiently schedule them as SCHED_NORMAL. As
+per the Isochronous task management, once a task has been scheduled as IDLEPRIO,
+it cannot be put back to SCHED_NORMAL without superuser privileges. Tasks can
+be set to start as SCHED_IDLEPRIO with the schedtool command like so:
+
+ schedtool -D -e ./mprime
+
+Subtick accounting.
+
+It is surprisingly difficult to get accurate CPU accounting, and in many cases,
+the accounting is done by simply determining what is happening at the precise
+moment a timer tick fires off. This becomes increasingly inaccurate as the
+timer tick frequency (HZ) is lowered. It is possible to create an application
+which uses almost 100% CPU, yet by being descheduled at the right time, records
+zero CPU usage. While the main problem with this is that there are possible
+security implications, it is also difficult to determine how much CPU a task
+really does use. BFS tries to use the sub-tick accounting from the TSC clock,
+where possible, to determine real CPU usage. This is not entirely reliable, but
+is far more likely to produce accurate CPU usage data than the existing designs
+and will not show tasks as consuming no CPU usage when they actually are. Thus,
+the amount of CPU reported as being used by BFS will more accurately represent
+how much CPU the task itself is using (as is shown for example by the 'time'
+application), so the reported values may be quite different to other schedulers.
+Values reported as the 'load' are more prone to problems with this design, but
+per process values are closer to real usage. When comparing throughput of BFS
+to other designs, it is important to compare the actual completed work in terms
+of total wall clock time taken and total work done, rather than the reported
+"cpu usage".
+
+
+Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org> Tue, 5 Apr 2011
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-arch.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-arch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..a2f27bbf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-arch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+ CPU Scheduler implementation hints for architecture specific code
+
+ Nick Piggin, 2005
+
+Context switch
+==============
+1. Runqueue locking
+By default, the switch_to arch function is called with the runqueue
+locked. This is usually not a problem unless switch_to may need to
+take the runqueue lock. This is usually due to a wake up operation in
+the context switch. See arch/ia64/include/asm/switch_to.h for an example.
+
+To request the scheduler call switch_to with the runqueue unlocked,
+you must `#define __ARCH_WANT_UNLOCKED_CTXSW` in a header file
+(typically the one where switch_to is defined).
+
+Unlocked context switches introduce only a very minor performance
+penalty to the core scheduler implementation in the CONFIG_SMP case.
+
+CPU idle
+========
+Your cpu_idle routines need to obey the following rules:
+
+1. Preempt should now disabled over idle routines. Should only
+ be enabled to call schedule() then disabled again.
+
+2. need_resched/TIF_NEED_RESCHED is only ever set, and will never
+ be cleared until the running task has called schedule(). Idle
+ threads need only ever query need_resched, and may never set or
+ clear it.
+
+3. When cpu_idle finds (need_resched() == 'true'), it should call
+ schedule(). It should not call schedule() otherwise.
+
+4. The only time interrupts need to be disabled when checking
+ need_resched is if we are about to sleep the processor until
+ the next interrupt (this doesn't provide any protection of
+ need_resched, it prevents losing an interrupt).
+
+ 4a. Common problem with this type of sleep appears to be:
+ local_irq_disable();
+ if (!need_resched()) {
+ local_irq_enable();
+ *** resched interrupt arrives here ***
+ __asm__("sleep until next interrupt");
+ }
+
+5. TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG can be set by idle routines that do not
+ need an interrupt to wake them up when need_resched goes high.
+ In other words, they must be periodically polling need_resched,
+ although it may be reasonable to do some background work or enter
+ a low CPU priority.
+
+ 5a. If TIF_POLLING_NRFLAG is set, and we do decide to enter
+ an interrupt sleep, it needs to be cleared then a memory
+ barrier issued (followed by a test of need_resched with
+ interrupts disabled, as explained in 3).
+
+arch/x86/kernel/process.c has examples of both polling and
+sleeping idle functions.
+
+
+Possible arch/ problems
+=======================
+
+Possible arch problems I found (and either tried to fix or didn't):
+
+ia64 - is safe_halt call racy vs interrupts? (does it sleep?) (See #4a)
+
+sh64 - Is sleeping racy vs interrupts? (See #4a)
+
+sparc - IRQs on at this point(?), change local_irq_save to _disable.
+ - TODO: needs secondary CPUs to disable preempt (See #1)
+
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f6b1873f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-bwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+CFS Bandwidth Control
+=====================
+
+[ This document only discusses CPU bandwidth control for SCHED_NORMAL.
+ The SCHED_RT case is covered in Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt ]
+
+CFS bandwidth control is a CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED extension which allows the
+specification of the maximum CPU bandwidth available to a group or hierarchy.
+
+The bandwidth allowed for a group is specified using a quota and period. Within
+each given "period" (microseconds), a group is allowed to consume only up to
+"quota" microseconds of CPU time. When the CPU bandwidth consumption of a
+group exceeds this limit (for that period), the tasks belonging to its
+hierarchy will be throttled and are not allowed to run again until the next
+period.
+
+A group's unused runtime is globally tracked, being refreshed with quota units
+above at each period boundary. As threads consume this bandwidth it is
+transferred to cpu-local "silos" on a demand basis. The amount transferred
+within each of these updates is tunable and described as the "slice".
+
+Management
+----------
+Quota and period are managed within the cpu subsystem via cgroupfs.
+
+cpu.cfs_quota_us: the total available run-time within a period (in microseconds)
+cpu.cfs_period_us: the length of a period (in microseconds)
+cpu.stat: exports throttling statistics [explained further below]
+
+The default values are:
+ cpu.cfs_period_us=100ms
+ cpu.cfs_quota=-1
+
+A value of -1 for cpu.cfs_quota_us indicates that the group does not have any
+bandwidth restriction in place, such a group is described as an unconstrained
+bandwidth group. This represents the traditional work-conserving behavior for
+CFS.
+
+Writing any (valid) positive value(s) will enact the specified bandwidth limit.
+The minimum quota allowed for the quota or period is 1ms. There is also an
+upper bound on the period length of 1s. Additional restrictions exist when
+bandwidth limits are used in a hierarchical fashion, these are explained in
+more detail below.
+
+Writing any negative value to cpu.cfs_quota_us will remove the bandwidth limit
+and return the group to an unconstrained state once more.
+
+Any updates to a group's bandwidth specification will result in it becoming
+unthrottled if it is in a constrained state.
+
+System wide settings
+--------------------
+For efficiency run-time is transferred between the global pool and CPU local
+"silos" in a batch fashion. This greatly reduces global accounting pressure
+on large systems. The amount transferred each time such an update is required
+is described as the "slice".
+
+This is tunable via procfs:
+ /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bandwidth_slice_us (default=5ms)
+
+Larger slice values will reduce transfer overheads, while smaller values allow
+for more fine-grained consumption.
+
+Statistics
+----------
+A group's bandwidth statistics are exported via 3 fields in cpu.stat.
+
+cpu.stat:
+- nr_periods: Number of enforcement intervals that have elapsed.
+- nr_throttled: Number of times the group has been throttled/limited.
+- throttled_time: The total time duration (in nanoseconds) for which entities
+ of the group have been throttled.
+
+This interface is read-only.
+
+Hierarchical considerations
+---------------------------
+The interface enforces that an individual entity's bandwidth is always
+attainable, that is: max(c_i) <= C. However, over-subscription in the
+aggregate case is explicitly allowed to enable work-conserving semantics
+within a hierarchy.
+ e.g. \Sum (c_i) may exceed C
+[ Where C is the parent's bandwidth, and c_i its children ]
+
+
+There are two ways in which a group may become throttled:
+ a. it fully consumes its own quota within a period
+ b. a parent's quota is fully consumed within its period
+
+In case b) above, even though the child may have runtime remaining it will not
+be allowed to until the parent's runtime is refreshed.
+
+Examples
+--------
+1. Limit a group to 1 CPU worth of runtime.
+
+ If period is 250ms and quota is also 250ms, the group will get
+ 1 CPU worth of runtime every 250ms.
+
+ # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 250ms */
+ # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 250ms */
+
+2. Limit a group to 2 CPUs worth of runtime on a multi-CPU machine.
+
+ With 500ms period and 1000ms quota, the group can get 2 CPUs worth of
+ runtime every 500ms.
+
+ # echo 1000000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 1000ms */
+ # echo 500000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 500ms */
+
+ The larger period here allows for increased burst capacity.
+
+3. Limit a group to 20% of 1 CPU.
+
+ With 50ms period, 10ms quota will be equivalent to 20% of 1 CPU.
+
+ # echo 10000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 10ms */
+ # echo 50000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 50ms */
+
+ By using a small period here we are ensuring a consistent latency
+ response at the expense of burst capacity.
+
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..21461a044
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,525 @@
+ Deadline Task Scheduling
+ ------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+
+ 0. WARNING
+ 1. Overview
+ 2. Scheduling algorithm
+ 3. Scheduling Real-Time Tasks
+ 4. Bandwidth management
+ 4.1 System-wide settings
+ 4.2 Task interface
+ 4.3 Default behavior
+ 5. Tasks CPU affinity
+ 5.1 SCHED_DEADLINE and cpusets HOWTO
+ 6. Future plans
+ A. Test suite
+ B. Minimal main()
+
+
+0. WARNING
+==========
+
+ Fiddling with these settings can result in an unpredictable or even unstable
+ system behavior. As for -rt (group) scheduling, it is assumed that root users
+ know what they're doing.
+
+
+1. Overview
+===========
+
+ The SCHED_DEADLINE policy contained inside the sched_dl scheduling class is
+ basically an implementation of the Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling
+ algorithm, augmented with a mechanism (called Constant Bandwidth Server, CBS)
+ that makes it possible to isolate the behavior of tasks between each other.
+
+
+2. Scheduling algorithm
+==================
+
+ SCHED_DEADLINE uses three parameters, named "runtime", "period", and
+ "deadline", to schedule tasks. A SCHED_DEADLINE task should receive
+ "runtime" microseconds of execution time every "period" microseconds, and
+ these "runtime" microseconds are available within "deadline" microseconds
+ from the beginning of the period. In order to implement this behaviour,
+ every time the task wakes up, the scheduler computes a "scheduling deadline"
+ consistent with the guarantee (using the CBS[2,3] algorithm). Tasks are then
+ scheduled using EDF[1] on these scheduling deadlines (the task with the
+ earliest scheduling deadline is selected for execution). Notice that the
+ task actually receives "runtime" time units within "deadline" if a proper
+ "admission control" strategy (see Section "4. Bandwidth management") is used
+ (clearly, if the system is overloaded this guarantee cannot be respected).
+
+ Summing up, the CBS[2,3] algorithms assigns scheduling deadlines to tasks so
+ that each task runs for at most its runtime every period, avoiding any
+ interference between different tasks (bandwidth isolation), while the EDF[1]
+ algorithm selects the task with the earliest scheduling deadline as the one
+ to be executed next. Thanks to this feature, tasks that do not strictly comply
+ with the "traditional" real-time task model (see Section 3) can effectively
+ use the new policy.
+
+ In more details, the CBS algorithm assigns scheduling deadlines to
+ tasks in the following way:
+
+ - Each SCHED_DEADLINE task is characterised by the "runtime",
+ "deadline", and "period" parameters;
+
+ - The state of the task is described by a "scheduling deadline", and
+ a "remaining runtime". These two parameters are initially set to 0;
+
+ - When a SCHED_DEADLINE task wakes up (becomes ready for execution),
+ the scheduler checks if
+
+ remaining runtime runtime
+ ---------------------------------- > ---------
+ scheduling deadline - current time period
+
+ then, if the scheduling deadline is smaller than the current time, or
+ this condition is verified, the scheduling deadline and the
+ remaining runtime are re-initialised as
+
+ scheduling deadline = current time + deadline
+ remaining runtime = runtime
+
+ otherwise, the scheduling deadline and the remaining runtime are
+ left unchanged;
+
+ - When a SCHED_DEADLINE task executes for an amount of time t, its
+ remaining runtime is decreased as
+
+ remaining runtime = remaining runtime - t
+
+ (technically, the runtime is decreased at every tick, or when the
+ task is descheduled / preempted);
+
+ - When the remaining runtime becomes less or equal than 0, the task is
+ said to be "throttled" (also known as "depleted" in real-time literature)
+ and cannot be scheduled until its scheduling deadline. The "replenishment
+ time" for this task (see next item) is set to be equal to the current
+ value of the scheduling deadline;
+
+ - When the current time is equal to the replenishment time of a
+ throttled task, the scheduling deadline and the remaining runtime are
+ updated as
+
+ scheduling deadline = scheduling deadline + period
+ remaining runtime = remaining runtime + runtime
+
+
+3. Scheduling Real-Time Tasks
+=============================
+
+ * BIG FAT WARNING ******************************************************
+ *
+ * This section contains a (not-thorough) summary on classical deadline
+ * scheduling theory, and how it applies to SCHED_DEADLINE.
+ * The reader can "safely" skip to Section 4 if only interested in seeing
+ * how the scheduling policy can be used. Anyway, we strongly recommend
+ * to come back here and continue reading (once the urge for testing is
+ * satisfied :P) to be sure of fully understanding all technical details.
+ ************************************************************************
+
+ There are no limitations on what kind of task can exploit this new
+ scheduling discipline, even if it must be said that it is particularly
+ suited for periodic or sporadic real-time tasks that need guarantees on their
+ timing behavior, e.g., multimedia, streaming, control applications, etc.
+
+ A typical real-time task is composed of a repetition of computation phases
+ (task instances, or jobs) which are activated on a periodic or sporadic
+ fashion.
+ Each job J_j (where J_j is the j^th job of the task) is characterised by an
+ arrival time r_j (the time when the job starts), an amount of computation
+ time c_j needed to finish the job, and a job absolute deadline d_j, which
+ is the time within which the job should be finished. The maximum execution
+ time max_j{c_j} is called "Worst Case Execution Time" (WCET) for the task.
+ A real-time task can be periodic with period P if r_{j+1} = r_j + P, or
+ sporadic with minimum inter-arrival time P is r_{j+1} >= r_j + P. Finally,
+ d_j = r_j + D, where D is the task's relative deadline.
+ The utilisation of a real-time task is defined as the ratio between its
+ WCET and its period (or minimum inter-arrival time), and represents
+ the fraction of CPU time needed to execute the task.
+
+ If the total utilisation sum_i(WCET_i/P_i) is larger than M (with M equal
+ to the number of CPUs), then the scheduler is unable to respect all the
+ deadlines.
+ Note that total utilisation is defined as the sum of the utilisations
+ WCET_i/P_i over all the real-time tasks in the system. When considering
+ multiple real-time tasks, the parameters of the i-th task are indicated
+ with the "_i" suffix.
+ Moreover, if the total utilisation is larger than M, then we risk starving
+ non- real-time tasks by real-time tasks.
+ If, instead, the total utilisation is smaller than M, then non real-time
+ tasks will not be starved and the system might be able to respect all the
+ deadlines.
+ As a matter of fact, in this case it is possible to provide an upper bound
+ for tardiness (defined as the maximum between 0 and the difference
+ between the finishing time of a job and its absolute deadline).
+ More precisely, it can be proven that using a global EDF scheduler the
+ maximum tardiness of each task is smaller or equal than
+ ((M − 1) · WCET_max − WCET_min)/(M − (M − 2) · U_max) + WCET_max
+ where WCET_max = max_i{WCET_i} is the maximum WCET, WCET_min=min_i{WCET_i}
+ is the minimum WCET, and U_max = max_i{WCET_i/P_i} is the maximum utilisation.
+
+ If M=1 (uniprocessor system), or in case of partitioned scheduling (each
+ real-time task is statically assigned to one and only one CPU), it is
+ possible to formally check if all the deadlines are respected.
+ If D_i = P_i for all tasks, then EDF is able to respect all the deadlines
+ of all the tasks executing on a CPU if and only if the total utilisation
+ of the tasks running on such a CPU is smaller or equal than 1.
+ If D_i != P_i for some task, then it is possible to define the density of
+ a task as C_i/min{D_i,T_i}, and EDF is able to respect all the deadlines
+ of all the tasks running on a CPU if the sum sum_i C_i/min{D_i,T_i} of the
+ densities of the tasks running on such a CPU is smaller or equal than 1
+ (notice that this condition is only sufficient, and not necessary).
+
+ On multiprocessor systems with global EDF scheduling (non partitioned
+ systems), a sufficient test for schedulability can not be based on the
+ utilisations (it can be shown that task sets with utilisations slightly
+ larger than 1 can miss deadlines regardless of the number of CPUs M).
+ However, as previously stated, enforcing that the total utilisation is smaller
+ than M is enough to guarantee that non real-time tasks are not starved and
+ that the tardiness of real-time tasks has an upper bound.
+
+ SCHED_DEADLINE can be used to schedule real-time tasks guaranteeing that
+ the jobs' deadlines of a task are respected. In order to do this, a task
+ must be scheduled by setting:
+
+ - runtime >= WCET
+ - deadline = D
+ - period <= P
+
+ IOW, if runtime >= WCET and if period is >= P, then the scheduling deadlines
+ and the absolute deadlines (d_j) coincide, so a proper admission control
+ allows to respect the jobs' absolute deadlines for this task (this is what is
+ called "hard schedulability property" and is an extension of Lemma 1 of [2]).
+ Notice that if runtime > deadline the admission control will surely reject
+ this task, as it is not possible to respect its temporal constraints.
+
+ References:
+ 1 - C. L. Liu and J. W. Layland. Scheduling algorithms for multiprogram-
+ ming in a hard-real-time environment. Journal of the Association for
+ Computing Machinery, 20(1), 1973.
+ 2 - L. Abeni , G. Buttazzo. Integrating Multimedia Applications in Hard
+ Real-Time Systems. Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Real-time Systems
+ Symposium, 1998. http://retis.sssup.it/~giorgio/paps/1998/rtss98-cbs.pdf
+ 3 - L. Abeni. Server Mechanisms for Multimedia Applications. ReTiS Lab
+ Technical Report. http://disi.unitn.it/~abeni/tr-98-01.pdf
+
+4. Bandwidth management
+=======================
+
+ As previously mentioned, in order for -deadline scheduling to be
+ effective and useful (that is, to be able to provide "runtime" time units
+ within "deadline"), it is important to have some method to keep the allocation
+ of the available fractions of CPU time to the various tasks under control.
+ This is usually called "admission control" and if it is not performed, then
+ no guarantee can be given on the actual scheduling of the -deadline tasks.
+
+ As already stated in Section 3, a necessary condition to be respected to
+ correctly schedule a set of real-time tasks is that the total utilisation
+ is smaller than M. When talking about -deadline tasks, this requires that
+ the sum of the ratio between runtime and period for all tasks is smaller
+ than M. Notice that the ratio runtime/period is equivalent to the utilisation
+ of a "traditional" real-time task, and is also often referred to as
+ "bandwidth".
+ The interface used to control the CPU bandwidth that can be allocated
+ to -deadline tasks is similar to the one already used for -rt
+ tasks with real-time group scheduling (a.k.a. RT-throttling - see
+ Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt), and is based on readable/
+ writable control files located in procfs (for system wide settings).
+ Notice that per-group settings (controlled through cgroupfs) are still not
+ defined for -deadline tasks, because more discussion is needed in order to
+ figure out how we want to manage SCHED_DEADLINE bandwidth at the task group
+ level.
+
+ A main difference between deadline bandwidth management and RT-throttling
+ is that -deadline tasks have bandwidth on their own (while -rt ones don't!),
+ and thus we don't need a higher level throttling mechanism to enforce the
+ desired bandwidth. In other words, this means that interface parameters are
+ only used at admission control time (i.e., when the user calls
+ sched_setattr()). Scheduling is then performed considering actual tasks'
+ parameters, so that CPU bandwidth is allocated to SCHED_DEADLINE tasks
+ respecting their needs in terms of granularity. Therefore, using this simple
+ interface we can put a cap on total utilization of -deadline tasks (i.e.,
+ \Sum (runtime_i / period_i) < global_dl_utilization_cap).
+
+4.1 System wide settings
+------------------------
+
+ The system wide settings are configured under the /proc virtual file system.
+
+ For now the -rt knobs are used for -deadline admission control and the
+ -deadline runtime is accounted against the -rt runtime. We realise that this
+ isn't entirely desirable; however, it is better to have a small interface for
+ now, and be able to change it easily later. The ideal situation (see 5.) is to
+ run -rt tasks from a -deadline server; in which case the -rt bandwidth is a
+ direct subset of dl_bw.
+
+ This means that, for a root_domain comprising M CPUs, -deadline tasks
+ can be created while the sum of their bandwidths stays below:
+
+ M * (sched_rt_runtime_us / sched_rt_period_us)
+
+ It is also possible to disable this bandwidth management logic, and
+ be thus free of oversubscribing the system up to any arbitrary level.
+ This is done by writing -1 in /proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us.
+
+
+4.2 Task interface
+------------------
+
+ Specifying a periodic/sporadic task that executes for a given amount of
+ runtime at each instance, and that is scheduled according to the urgency of
+ its own timing constraints needs, in general, a way of declaring:
+ - a (maximum/typical) instance execution time,
+ - a minimum interval between consecutive instances,
+ - a time constraint by which each instance must be completed.
+
+ Therefore:
+ * a new struct sched_attr, containing all the necessary fields is
+ provided;
+ * the new scheduling related syscalls that manipulate it, i.e.,
+ sched_setattr() and sched_getattr() are implemented.
+
+
+4.3 Default behavior
+---------------------
+
+ The default value for SCHED_DEADLINE bandwidth is to have rt_runtime equal to
+ 950000. With rt_period equal to 1000000, by default, it means that -deadline
+ tasks can use at most 95%, multiplied by the number of CPUs that compose the
+ root_domain, for each root_domain.
+ This means that non -deadline tasks will receive at least 5% of the CPU time,
+ and that -deadline tasks will receive their runtime with a guaranteed
+ worst-case delay respect to the "deadline" parameter. If "deadline" = "period"
+ and the cpuset mechanism is used to implement partitioned scheduling (see
+ Section 5), then this simple setting of the bandwidth management is able to
+ deterministically guarantee that -deadline tasks will receive their runtime
+ in a period.
+
+ Finally, notice that in order not to jeopardize the admission control a
+ -deadline task cannot fork.
+
+5. Tasks CPU affinity
+=====================
+
+ -deadline tasks cannot have an affinity mask smaller that the entire
+ root_domain they are created on. However, affinities can be specified
+ through the cpuset facility (Documentation/cgroups/cpusets.txt).
+
+5.1 SCHED_DEADLINE and cpusets HOWTO
+------------------------------------
+
+ An example of a simple configuration (pin a -deadline task to CPU0)
+ follows (rt-app is used to create a -deadline task).
+
+ mkdir /dev/cpuset
+ mount -t cgroup -o cpuset cpuset /dev/cpuset
+ cd /dev/cpuset
+ mkdir cpu0
+ echo 0 > cpu0/cpuset.cpus
+ echo 0 > cpu0/cpuset.mems
+ echo 1 > cpuset.cpu_exclusive
+ echo 0 > cpuset.sched_load_balance
+ echo 1 > cpu0/cpuset.cpu_exclusive
+ echo 1 > cpu0/cpuset.mem_exclusive
+ echo $$ > cpu0/tasks
+ rt-app -t 100000:10000:d:0 -D5 (it is now actually superfluous to specify
+ task affinity)
+
+6. Future plans
+===============
+
+ Still missing:
+
+ - refinements to deadline inheritance, especially regarding the possibility
+ of retaining bandwidth isolation among non-interacting tasks. This is
+ being studied from both theoretical and practical points of view, and
+ hopefully we should be able to produce some demonstrative code soon;
+ - (c)group based bandwidth management, and maybe scheduling;
+ - access control for non-root users (and related security concerns to
+ address), which is the best way to allow unprivileged use of the mechanisms
+ and how to prevent non-root users "cheat" the system?
+
+ As already discussed, we are planning also to merge this work with the EDF
+ throttling patches [https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/2/23/239] but we still are in
+ the preliminary phases of the merge and we really seek feedback that would
+ help us decide on the direction it should take.
+
+Appendix A. Test suite
+======================
+
+ The SCHED_DEADLINE policy can be easily tested using two applications that
+ are part of a wider Linux Scheduler validation suite. The suite is
+ available as a GitHub repository: https://github.com/scheduler-tools.
+
+ The first testing application is called rt-app and can be used to
+ start multiple threads with specific parameters. rt-app supports
+ SCHED_{OTHER,FIFO,RR,DEADLINE} scheduling policies and their related
+ parameters (e.g., niceness, priority, runtime/deadline/period). rt-app
+ is a valuable tool, as it can be used to synthetically recreate certain
+ workloads (maybe mimicking real use-cases) and evaluate how the scheduler
+ behaves under such workloads. In this way, results are easily reproducible.
+ rt-app is available at: https://github.com/scheduler-tools/rt-app.
+
+ Thread parameters can be specified from the command line, with something like
+ this:
+
+ # rt-app -t 100000:10000:d -t 150000:20000:f:10 -D5
+
+ The above creates 2 threads. The first one, scheduled by SCHED_DEADLINE,
+ executes for 10ms every 100ms. The second one, scheduled at SCHED_FIFO
+ priority 10, executes for 20ms every 150ms. The test will run for a total
+ of 5 seconds.
+
+ More interestingly, configurations can be described with a json file that
+ can be passed as input to rt-app with something like this:
+
+ # rt-app my_config.json
+
+ The parameters that can be specified with the second method are a superset
+ of the command line options. Please refer to rt-app documentation for more
+ details (<rt-app-sources>/doc/*.json).
+
+ The second testing application is a modification of schedtool, called
+ schedtool-dl, which can be used to setup SCHED_DEADLINE parameters for a
+ certain pid/application. schedtool-dl is available at:
+ https://github.com/scheduler-tools/schedtool-dl.git.
+
+ The usage is straightforward:
+
+ # schedtool -E -t 10000000:100000000 -e ./my_cpuhog_app
+
+ With this, my_cpuhog_app is put to run inside a SCHED_DEADLINE reservation
+ of 10ms every 100ms (note that parameters are expressed in microseconds).
+ You can also use schedtool to create a reservation for an already running
+ application, given that you know its pid:
+
+ # schedtool -E -t 10000000:100000000 my_app_pid
+
+Appendix B. Minimal main()
+==========================
+
+ We provide in what follows a simple (ugly) self-contained code snippet
+ showing how SCHED_DEADLINE reservations can be created by a real-time
+ application developer.
+
+ #define _GNU_SOURCE
+ #include <unistd.h>
+ #include <stdio.h>
+ #include <stdlib.h>
+ #include <string.h>
+ #include <time.h>
+ #include <linux/unistd.h>
+ #include <linux/kernel.h>
+ #include <linux/types.h>
+ #include <sys/syscall.h>
+ #include <pthread.h>
+
+ #define gettid() syscall(__NR_gettid)
+
+ #define SCHED_DEADLINE 6
+
+ /* XXX use the proper syscall numbers */
+ #ifdef __x86_64__
+ #define __NR_sched_setattr 314
+ #define __NR_sched_getattr 315
+ #endif
+
+ #ifdef __i386__
+ #define __NR_sched_setattr 351
+ #define __NR_sched_getattr 352
+ #endif
+
+ #ifdef __arm__
+ #define __NR_sched_setattr 380
+ #define __NR_sched_getattr 381
+ #endif
+
+ static volatile int done;
+
+ struct sched_attr {
+ __u32 size;
+
+ __u32 sched_policy;
+ __u64 sched_flags;
+
+ /* SCHED_NORMAL, SCHED_BATCH */
+ __s32 sched_nice;
+
+ /* SCHED_FIFO, SCHED_RR */
+ __u32 sched_priority;
+
+ /* SCHED_DEADLINE (nsec) */
+ __u64 sched_runtime;
+ __u64 sched_deadline;
+ __u64 sched_period;
+ };
+
+ int sched_setattr(pid_t pid,
+ const struct sched_attr *attr,
+ unsigned int flags)
+ {
+ return syscall(__NR_sched_setattr, pid, attr, flags);
+ }
+
+ int sched_getattr(pid_t pid,
+ struct sched_attr *attr,
+ unsigned int size,
+ unsigned int flags)
+ {
+ return syscall(__NR_sched_getattr, pid, attr, size, flags);
+ }
+
+ void *run_deadline(void *data)
+ {
+ struct sched_attr attr;
+ int x = 0;
+ int ret;
+ unsigned int flags = 0;
+
+ printf("deadline thread started [%ld]\n", gettid());
+
+ attr.size = sizeof(attr);
+ attr.sched_flags = 0;
+ attr.sched_nice = 0;
+ attr.sched_priority = 0;
+
+ /* This creates a 10ms/30ms reservation */
+ attr.sched_policy = SCHED_DEADLINE;
+ attr.sched_runtime = 10 * 1000 * 1000;
+ attr.sched_period = attr.sched_deadline = 30 * 1000 * 1000;
+
+ ret = sched_setattr(0, &attr, flags);
+ if (ret < 0) {
+ done = 0;
+ perror("sched_setattr");
+ exit(-1);
+ }
+
+ while (!done) {
+ x++;
+ }
+
+ printf("deadline thread dies [%ld]\n", gettid());
+ return NULL;
+ }
+
+ int main (int argc, char **argv)
+ {
+ pthread_t thread;
+
+ printf("main thread [%ld]\n", gettid());
+
+ pthread_create(&thread, NULL, run_deadline, NULL);
+
+ sleep(10);
+
+ done = 1;
+ pthread_join(thread, NULL);
+
+ printf("main dies [%ld]\n", gettid());
+ return 0;
+ }
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-design-CFS.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-design-CFS.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f14f49304
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-design-CFS.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,242 @@
+ =============
+ CFS Scheduler
+ =============
+
+
+1. OVERVIEW
+
+CFS stands for "Completely Fair Scheduler," and is the new "desktop" process
+scheduler implemented by Ingo Molnar and merged in Linux 2.6.23. It is the
+replacement for the previous vanilla scheduler's SCHED_OTHER interactivity
+code.
+
+80% of CFS's design can be summed up in a single sentence: CFS basically models
+an "ideal, precise multi-tasking CPU" on real hardware.
+
+"Ideal multi-tasking CPU" is a (non-existent :-)) CPU that has 100% physical
+power and which can run each task at precise equal speed, in parallel, each at
+1/nr_running speed. For example: if there are 2 tasks running, then it runs
+each at 50% physical power --- i.e., actually in parallel.
+
+On real hardware, we can run only a single task at once, so we have to
+introduce the concept of "virtual runtime." The virtual runtime of a task
+specifies when its next timeslice would start execution on the ideal
+multi-tasking CPU described above. In practice, the virtual runtime of a task
+is its actual runtime normalized to the total number of running tasks.
+
+
+
+2. FEW IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
+
+In CFS the virtual runtime is expressed and tracked via the per-task
+p->se.vruntime (nanosec-unit) value. This way, it's possible to accurately
+timestamp and measure the "expected CPU time" a task should have gotten.
+
+[ small detail: on "ideal" hardware, at any time all tasks would have the same
+ p->se.vruntime value --- i.e., tasks would execute simultaneously and no task
+ would ever get "out of balance" from the "ideal" share of CPU time. ]
+
+CFS's task picking logic is based on this p->se.vruntime value and it is thus
+very simple: it always tries to run the task with the smallest p->se.vruntime
+value (i.e., the task which executed least so far). CFS always tries to split
+up CPU time between runnable tasks as close to "ideal multitasking hardware" as
+possible.
+
+Most of the rest of CFS's design just falls out of this really simple concept,
+with a few add-on embellishments like nice levels, multiprocessing and various
+algorithm variants to recognize sleepers.
+
+
+
+3. THE RBTREE
+
+CFS's design is quite radical: it does not use the old data structures for the
+runqueues, but it uses a time-ordered rbtree to build a "timeline" of future
+task execution, and thus has no "array switch" artifacts (by which both the
+previous vanilla scheduler and RSDL/SD are affected).
+
+CFS also maintains the rq->cfs.min_vruntime value, which is a monotonic
+increasing value tracking the smallest vruntime among all tasks in the
+runqueue. The total amount of work done by the system is tracked using
+min_vruntime; that value is used to place newly activated entities on the left
+side of the tree as much as possible.
+
+The total number of running tasks in the runqueue is accounted through the
+rq->cfs.load value, which is the sum of the weights of the tasks queued on the
+runqueue.
+
+CFS maintains a time-ordered rbtree, where all runnable tasks are sorted by the
+p->se.vruntime key. CFS picks the "leftmost" task from this tree and sticks to it.
+As the system progresses forwards, the executed tasks are put into the tree
+more and more to the right --- slowly but surely giving a chance for every task
+to become the "leftmost task" and thus get on the CPU within a deterministic
+amount of time.
+
+Summing up, CFS works like this: it runs a task a bit, and when the task
+schedules (or a scheduler tick happens) the task's CPU usage is "accounted
+for": the (small) time it just spent using the physical CPU is added to
+p->se.vruntime. Once p->se.vruntime gets high enough so that another task
+becomes the "leftmost task" of the time-ordered rbtree it maintains (plus a
+small amount of "granularity" distance relative to the leftmost task so that we
+do not over-schedule tasks and trash the cache), then the new leftmost task is
+picked and the current task is preempted.
+
+
+
+4. SOME FEATURES OF CFS
+
+CFS uses nanosecond granularity accounting and does not rely on any jiffies or
+other HZ detail. Thus the CFS scheduler has no notion of "timeslices" in the
+way the previous scheduler had, and has no heuristics whatsoever. There is
+only one central tunable (you have to switch on CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG):
+
+ /proc/sys/kernel/sched_min_granularity_ns
+
+which can be used to tune the scheduler from "desktop" (i.e., low latencies) to
+"server" (i.e., good batching) workloads. It defaults to a setting suitable
+for desktop workloads. SCHED_BATCH is handled by the CFS scheduler module too.
+
+Due to its design, the CFS scheduler is not prone to any of the "attacks" that
+exist today against the heuristics of the stock scheduler: fiftyp.c, thud.c,
+chew.c, ring-test.c, massive_intr.c all work fine and do not impact
+interactivity and produce the expected behavior.
+
+The CFS scheduler has a much stronger handling of nice levels and SCHED_BATCH
+than the previous vanilla scheduler: both types of workloads are isolated much
+more aggressively.
+
+SMP load-balancing has been reworked/sanitized: the runqueue-walking
+assumptions are gone from the load-balancing code now, and iterators of the
+scheduling modules are used. The balancing code got quite a bit simpler as a
+result.
+
+
+
+5. Scheduling policies
+
+CFS implements three scheduling policies:
+
+ - SCHED_NORMAL (traditionally called SCHED_OTHER): The scheduling
+ policy that is used for regular tasks.
+
+ - SCHED_BATCH: Does not preempt nearly as often as regular tasks
+ would, thereby allowing tasks to run longer and make better use of
+ caches but at the cost of interactivity. This is well suited for
+ batch jobs.
+
+ - SCHED_IDLE: This is even weaker than nice 19, but its not a true
+ idle timer scheduler in order to avoid to get into priority
+ inversion problems which would deadlock the machine.
+
+SCHED_FIFO/_RR are implemented in sched/rt.c and are as specified by
+POSIX.
+
+The command chrt from util-linux-ng 2.13.1.1 can set all of these except
+SCHED_IDLE.
+
+
+
+6. SCHEDULING CLASSES
+
+The new CFS scheduler has been designed in such a way to introduce "Scheduling
+Classes," an extensible hierarchy of scheduler modules. These modules
+encapsulate scheduling policy details and are handled by the scheduler core
+without the core code assuming too much about them.
+
+sched/fair.c implements the CFS scheduler described above.
+
+sched/rt.c implements SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR semantics, in a simpler way than
+the previous vanilla scheduler did. It uses 100 runqueues (for all 100 RT
+priority levels, instead of 140 in the previous scheduler) and it needs no
+expired array.
+
+Scheduling classes are implemented through the sched_class structure, which
+contains hooks to functions that must be called whenever an interesting event
+occurs.
+
+This is the (partial) list of the hooks:
+
+ - enqueue_task(...)
+
+ Called when a task enters a runnable state.
+ It puts the scheduling entity (task) into the red-black tree and
+ increments the nr_running variable.
+
+ - dequeue_task(...)
+
+ When a task is no longer runnable, this function is called to keep the
+ corresponding scheduling entity out of the red-black tree. It decrements
+ the nr_running variable.
+
+ - yield_task(...)
+
+ This function is basically just a dequeue followed by an enqueue, unless the
+ compat_yield sysctl is turned on; in that case, it places the scheduling
+ entity at the right-most end of the red-black tree.
+
+ - check_preempt_curr(...)
+
+ This function checks if a task that entered the runnable state should
+ preempt the currently running task.
+
+ - pick_next_task(...)
+
+ This function chooses the most appropriate task eligible to run next.
+
+ - set_curr_task(...)
+
+ This function is called when a task changes its scheduling class or changes
+ its task group.
+
+ - task_tick(...)
+
+ This function is mostly called from time tick functions; it might lead to
+ process switch. This drives the running preemption.
+
+
+
+
+7. GROUP SCHEDULER EXTENSIONS TO CFS
+
+Normally, the scheduler operates on individual tasks and strives to provide
+fair CPU time to each task. Sometimes, it may be desirable to group tasks and
+provide fair CPU time to each such task group. For example, it may be
+desirable to first provide fair CPU time to each user on the system and then to
+each task belonging to a user.
+
+CONFIG_CGROUP_SCHED strives to achieve exactly that. It lets tasks to be
+grouped and divides CPU time fairly among such groups.
+
+CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED permits to group real-time (i.e., SCHED_FIFO and
+SCHED_RR) tasks.
+
+CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED permits to group CFS (i.e., SCHED_NORMAL and
+SCHED_BATCH) tasks.
+
+ These options need CONFIG_CGROUPS to be defined, and let the administrator
+ create arbitrary groups of tasks, using the "cgroup" pseudo filesystem. See
+ Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt for more information about this filesystem.
+
+When CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED is defined, a "cpu.shares" file is created for each
+group created using the pseudo filesystem. See example steps below to create
+task groups and modify their CPU share using the "cgroups" pseudo filesystem.
+
+ # mount -t tmpfs cgroup_root /sys/fs/cgroup
+ # mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu
+ # mount -t cgroup -ocpu none /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu
+ # cd /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu
+
+ # mkdir multimedia # create "multimedia" group of tasks
+ # mkdir browser # create "browser" group of tasks
+
+ # #Configure the multimedia group to receive twice the CPU bandwidth
+ # #that of browser group
+
+ # echo 2048 > multimedia/cpu.shares
+ # echo 1024 > browser/cpu.shares
+
+ # firefox & # Launch firefox and move it to "browser" group
+ # echo <firefox_pid> > browser/tasks
+
+ # #Launch gmplayer (or your favourite movie player)
+ # echo <movie_player_pid> > multimedia/tasks
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-domains.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-domains.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4af80b1c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-domains.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+Each CPU has a "base" scheduling domain (struct sched_domain). The domain
+hierarchy is built from these base domains via the ->parent pointer. ->parent
+MUST be NULL terminated, and domain structures should be per-CPU as they are
+locklessly updated.
+
+Each scheduling domain spans a number of CPUs (stored in the ->span field).
+A domain's span MUST be a superset of it child's span (this restriction could
+be relaxed if the need arises), and a base domain for CPU i MUST span at least
+i. The top domain for each CPU will generally span all CPUs in the system
+although strictly it doesn't have to, but this could lead to a case where some
+CPUs will never be given tasks to run unless the CPUs allowed mask is
+explicitly set. A sched domain's span means "balance process load among these
+CPUs".
+
+Each scheduling domain must have one or more CPU groups (struct sched_group)
+which are organised as a circular one way linked list from the ->groups
+pointer. The union of cpumasks of these groups MUST be the same as the
+domain's span. The intersection of cpumasks from any two of these groups
+MUST be the empty set. The group pointed to by the ->groups pointer MUST
+contain the CPU to which the domain belongs. Groups may be shared among
+CPUs as they contain read only data after they have been set up.
+
+Balancing within a sched domain occurs between groups. That is, each group
+is treated as one entity. The load of a group is defined as the sum of the
+load of each of its member CPUs, and only when the load of a group becomes
+out of balance are tasks moved between groups.
+
+In kernel/sched/core.c, trigger_load_balance() is run periodically on each CPU
+through scheduler_tick(). It raises a softirq after the next regularly scheduled
+rebalancing event for the current runqueue has arrived. The actual load
+balancing workhorse, run_rebalance_domains()->rebalance_domains(), is then run
+in softirq context (SCHED_SOFTIRQ).
+
+The latter function takes two arguments: the current CPU and whether it was idle
+at the time the scheduler_tick() happened and iterates over all sched domains
+our CPU is on, starting from its base domain and going up the ->parent chain.
+While doing that, it checks to see if the current domain has exhausted its
+rebalance interval. If so, it runs load_balance() on that domain. It then checks
+the parent sched_domain (if it exists), and the parent of the parent and so
+forth.
+
+Initially, load_balance() finds the busiest group in the current sched domain.
+If it succeeds, it looks for the busiest runqueue of all the CPUs' runqueues in
+that group. If it manages to find such a runqueue, it locks both our initial
+CPU's runqueue and the newly found busiest one and starts moving tasks from it
+to our runqueue. The exact number of tasks amounts to an imbalance previously
+computed while iterating over this sched domain's groups.
+
+*** Implementing sched domains ***
+The "base" domain will "span" the first level of the hierarchy. In the case
+of SMT, you'll span all siblings of the physical CPU, with each group being
+a single virtual CPU.
+
+In SMP, the parent of the base domain will span all physical CPUs in the
+node. Each group being a single physical CPU. Then with NUMA, the parent
+of the SMP domain will span the entire machine, with each group having the
+cpumask of a node. Or, you could do multi-level NUMA or Opteron, for example,
+might have just one domain covering its one NUMA level.
+
+The implementor should read comments in include/linux/sched.h:
+struct sched_domain fields, SD_FLAG_*, SD_*_INIT to get an idea of
+the specifics and what to tune.
+
+Architectures may retain the regular override the default SD_*_INIT flags
+while using the generic domain builder in kernel/sched/core.c if they wish to
+retain the traditional SMT->SMP->NUMA topology (or some subset of that). This
+can be done by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_TUNE.
+
+Alternatively, the architecture may completely override the generic domain
+builder by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_DOMAIN, and exporting your
+arch_init_sched_domains function. This function will attach domains to all
+CPUs using cpu_attach_domain.
+
+The sched-domains debugging infrastructure can be enabled by enabling
+CONFIG_SCHED_DEBUG. This enables an error checking parse of the sched domains
+which should catch most possible errors (described above). It also prints out
+the domain structure in a visual format.
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-nice-design.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-nice-design.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3ac1e46d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-nice-design.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+This document explains the thinking about the revamped and streamlined
+nice-levels implementation in the new Linux scheduler.
+
+Nice levels were always pretty weak under Linux and people continuously
+pestered us to make nice +19 tasks use up much less CPU time.
+
+Unfortunately that was not that easy to implement under the old
+scheduler, (otherwise we'd have done it long ago) because nice level
+support was historically coupled to timeslice length, and timeslice
+units were driven by the HZ tick, so the smallest timeslice was 1/HZ.
+
+In the O(1) scheduler (in 2003) we changed negative nice levels to be
+much stronger than they were before in 2.4 (and people were happy about
+that change), and we also intentionally calibrated the linear timeslice
+rule so that nice +19 level would be _exactly_ 1 jiffy. To better
+understand it, the timeslice graph went like this (cheesy ASCII art
+alert!):
+
+
+ A
+ \ | [timeslice length]
+ \ |
+ \ |
+ \ |
+ \ |
+ \|___100msecs
+ |^ . _
+ | ^ . _
+ | ^ . _
+ -*----------------------------------*-----> [nice level]
+ -20 | +19
+ |
+ |
+
+So that if someone wanted to really renice tasks, +19 would give a much
+bigger hit than the normal linear rule would do. (The solution of
+changing the ABI to extend priorities was discarded early on.)
+
+This approach worked to some degree for some time, but later on with
+HZ=1000 it caused 1 jiffy to be 1 msec, which meant 0.1% CPU usage which
+we felt to be a bit excessive. Excessive _not_ because it's too small of
+a CPU utilization, but because it causes too frequent (once per
+millisec) rescheduling. (and would thus trash the cache, etc. Remember,
+this was long ago when hardware was weaker and caches were smaller, and
+people were running number crunching apps at nice +19.)
+
+So for HZ=1000 we changed nice +19 to 5msecs, because that felt like the
+right minimal granularity - and this translates to 5% CPU utilization.
+But the fundamental HZ-sensitive property for nice+19 still remained,
+and we never got a single complaint about nice +19 being too _weak_ in
+terms of CPU utilization, we only got complaints about it (still) being
+too _strong_ :-)
+
+To sum it up: we always wanted to make nice levels more consistent, but
+within the constraints of HZ and jiffies and their nasty design level
+coupling to timeslices and granularity it was not really viable.
+
+The second (less frequent but still periodically occurring) complaint
+about Linux's nice level support was its assymetry around the origo
+(which you can see demonstrated in the picture above), or more
+accurately: the fact that nice level behavior depended on the _absolute_
+nice level as well, while the nice API itself is fundamentally
+"relative":
+
+ int nice(int inc);
+
+ asmlinkage long sys_nice(int increment)
+
+(the first one is the glibc API, the second one is the syscall API.)
+Note that the 'inc' is relative to the current nice level. Tools like
+bash's "nice" command mirror this relative API.
+
+With the old scheduler, if you for example started a niced task with +1
+and another task with +2, the CPU split between the two tasks would
+depend on the nice level of the parent shell - if it was at nice -10 the
+CPU split was different than if it was at +5 or +10.
+
+A third complaint against Linux's nice level support was that negative
+nice levels were not 'punchy enough', so lots of people had to resort to
+run audio (and other multimedia) apps under RT priorities such as
+SCHED_FIFO. But this caused other problems: SCHED_FIFO is not starvation
+proof, and a buggy SCHED_FIFO app can also lock up the system for good.
+
+The new scheduler in v2.6.23 addresses all three types of complaints:
+
+To address the first complaint (of nice levels being not "punchy"
+enough), the scheduler was decoupled from 'time slice' and HZ concepts
+(and granularity was made a separate concept from nice levels) and thus
+it was possible to implement better and more consistent nice +19
+support: with the new scheduler nice +19 tasks get a HZ-independent
+1.5%, instead of the variable 3%-5%-9% range they got in the old
+scheduler.
+
+To address the second complaint (of nice levels not being consistent),
+the new scheduler makes nice(1) have the same CPU utilization effect on
+tasks, regardless of their absolute nice levels. So on the new
+scheduler, running a nice +10 and a nice 11 task has the same CPU
+utilization "split" between them as running a nice -5 and a nice -4
+task. (one will get 55% of the CPU, the other 45%.) That is why nice
+levels were changed to be "multiplicative" (or exponential) - that way
+it does not matter which nice level you start out from, the 'relative
+result' will always be the same.
+
+The third complaint (of negative nice levels not being "punchy" enough
+and forcing audio apps to run under the more dangerous SCHED_FIFO
+scheduling policy) is addressed by the new scheduler almost
+automatically: stronger negative nice levels are an automatic
+side-effect of the recalibrated dynamic range of nice levels.
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..71b54d549
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,183 @@
+ Real-Time group scheduling
+ --------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+========
+
+0. WARNING
+1. Overview
+ 1.1 The problem
+ 1.2 The solution
+2. The interface
+ 2.1 System-wide settings
+ 2.2 Default behaviour
+ 2.3 Basis for grouping tasks
+3. Future plans
+
+
+0. WARNING
+==========
+
+ Fiddling with these settings can result in an unstable system, the knobs are
+ root only and assumes root knows what he is doing.
+
+Most notable:
+
+ * very small values in sched_rt_period_us can result in an unstable
+ system when the period is smaller than either the available hrtimer
+ resolution, or the time it takes to handle the budget refresh itself.
+
+ * very small values in sched_rt_runtime_us can result in an unstable
+ system when the runtime is so small the system has difficulty making
+ forward progress (NOTE: the migration thread and kstopmachine both
+ are real-time processes).
+
+1. Overview
+===========
+
+
+1.1 The problem
+---------------
+
+Realtime scheduling is all about determinism, a group has to be able to rely on
+the amount of bandwidth (eg. CPU time) being constant. In order to schedule
+multiple groups of realtime tasks, each group must be assigned a fixed portion
+of the CPU time available. Without a minimum guarantee a realtime group can
+obviously fall short. A fuzzy upper limit is of no use since it cannot be
+relied upon. Which leaves us with just the single fixed portion.
+
+1.2 The solution
+----------------
+
+CPU time is divided by means of specifying how much time can be spent running
+in a given period. We allocate this "run time" for each realtime group which
+the other realtime groups will not be permitted to use.
+
+Any time not allocated to a realtime group will be used to run normal priority
+tasks (SCHED_OTHER). Any allocated run time not used will also be picked up by
+SCHED_OTHER.
+
+Let's consider an example: a frame fixed realtime renderer must deliver 25
+frames a second, which yields a period of 0.04s per frame. Now say it will also
+have to play some music and respond to input, leaving it with around 80% CPU
+time dedicated for the graphics. We can then give this group a run time of 0.8
+* 0.04s = 0.032s.
+
+This way the graphics group will have a 0.04s period with a 0.032s run time
+limit. Now if the audio thread needs to refill the DMA buffer every 0.005s, but
+needs only about 3% CPU time to do so, it can do with a 0.03 * 0.005s =
+0.00015s. So this group can be scheduled with a period of 0.005s and a run time
+of 0.00015s.
+
+The remaining CPU time will be used for user input and other tasks. Because
+realtime tasks have explicitly allocated the CPU time they need to perform
+their tasks, buffer underruns in the graphics or audio can be eliminated.
+
+NOTE: the above example is not fully implemented yet. We still
+lack an EDF scheduler to make non-uniform periods usable.
+
+
+2. The Interface
+================
+
+
+2.1 System wide settings
+------------------------
+
+The system wide settings are configured under the /proc virtual file system:
+
+/proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_period_us:
+ The scheduling period that is equivalent to 100% CPU bandwidth
+
+/proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_runtime_us:
+ A global limit on how much time realtime scheduling may use. Even without
+ CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED enabled, this will limit time reserved to realtime
+ processes. With CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED it signifies the total bandwidth
+ available to all realtime groups.
+
+ * Time is specified in us because the interface is s32. This gives an
+ operating range from 1us to about 35 minutes.
+ * sched_rt_period_us takes values from 1 to INT_MAX.
+ * sched_rt_runtime_us takes values from -1 to (INT_MAX - 1).
+ * A run time of -1 specifies runtime == period, ie. no limit.
+
+
+2.2 Default behaviour
+---------------------
+
+The default values for sched_rt_period_us (1000000 or 1s) and
+sched_rt_runtime_us (950000 or 0.95s). This gives 0.05s to be used by
+SCHED_OTHER (non-RT tasks). These defaults were chosen so that a run-away
+realtime tasks will not lock up the machine but leave a little time to recover
+it. By setting runtime to -1 you'd get the old behaviour back.
+
+By default all bandwidth is assigned to the root group and new groups get the
+period from /proc/sys/kernel/sched_rt_period_us and a run time of 0. If you
+want to assign bandwidth to another group, reduce the root group's bandwidth
+and assign some or all of the difference to another group.
+
+Realtime group scheduling means you have to assign a portion of total CPU
+bandwidth to the group before it will accept realtime tasks. Therefore you will
+not be able to run realtime tasks as any user other than root until you have
+done that, even if the user has the rights to run processes with realtime
+priority!
+
+
+2.3 Basis for grouping tasks
+----------------------------
+
+Enabling CONFIG_RT_GROUP_SCHED lets you explicitly allocate real
+CPU bandwidth to task groups.
+
+This uses the cgroup virtual file system and "<cgroup>/cpu.rt_runtime_us"
+to control the CPU time reserved for each control group.
+
+For more information on working with control groups, you should read
+Documentation/cgroups/cgroups.txt as well.
+
+Group settings are checked against the following limits in order to keep the
+configuration schedulable:
+
+ \Sum_{i} runtime_{i} / global_period <= global_runtime / global_period
+
+For now, this can be simplified to just the following (but see Future plans):
+
+ \Sum_{i} runtime_{i} <= global_runtime
+
+
+3. Future plans
+===============
+
+There is work in progress to make the scheduling period for each group
+("<cgroup>/cpu.rt_period_us") configurable as well.
+
+The constraint on the period is that a subgroup must have a smaller or
+equal period to its parent. But realistically its not very useful _yet_
+as its prone to starvation without deadline scheduling.
+
+Consider two sibling groups A and B; both have 50% bandwidth, but A's
+period is twice the length of B's.
+
+* group A: period=100000us, runtime=10000us
+ - this runs for 0.01s once every 0.1s
+
+* group B: period= 50000us, runtime=10000us
+ - this runs for 0.01s twice every 0.1s (or once every 0.05 sec).
+
+This means that currently a while (1) loop in A will run for the full period of
+B and can starve B's tasks (assuming they are of lower priority) for a whole
+period.
+
+The next project will be SCHED_EDF (Earliest Deadline First scheduling) to bring
+full deadline scheduling to the linux kernel. Deadline scheduling the above
+groups and treating end of the period as a deadline will ensure that they both
+get their allocated time.
+
+Implementing SCHED_EDF might take a while to complete. Priority Inheritance is
+the biggest challenge as the current linux PI infrastructure is geared towards
+the limited static priority levels 0-99. With deadline scheduling you need to
+do deadline inheritance (since priority is inversely proportional to the
+deadline delta (deadline - now)).
+
+This means the whole PI machinery will have to be reworked - and that is one of
+the most complex pieces of code we have.
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-stats.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-stats.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8259b34a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-stats.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
+Version 15 of schedstats dropped counters for some sched_yield:
+yld_exp_empty, yld_act_empty and yld_both_empty. Otherwise, it is
+identical to version 14.
+
+Version 14 of schedstats includes support for sched_domains, which hit the
+mainline kernel in 2.6.20 although it is identical to the stats from version
+12 which was in the kernel from 2.6.13-2.6.19 (version 13 never saw a kernel
+release). Some counters make more sense to be per-runqueue; other to be
+per-domain. Note that domains (and their associated information) will only
+be pertinent and available on machines utilizing CONFIG_SMP.
+
+In version 14 of schedstat, there is at least one level of domain
+statistics for each cpu listed, and there may well be more than one
+domain. Domains have no particular names in this implementation, but
+the highest numbered one typically arbitrates balancing across all the
+cpus on the machine, while domain0 is the most tightly focused domain,
+sometimes balancing only between pairs of cpus. At this time, there
+are no architectures which need more than three domain levels. The first
+field in the domain stats is a bit map indicating which cpus are affected
+by that domain.
+
+These fields are counters, and only increment. Programs which make use
+of these will need to start with a baseline observation and then calculate
+the change in the counters at each subsequent observation. A perl script
+which does this for many of the fields is available at
+
+ http://eaglet.rain.com/rick/linux/schedstat/
+
+Note that any such script will necessarily be version-specific, as the main
+reason to change versions is changes in the output format. For those wishing
+to write their own scripts, the fields are described here.
+
+CPU statistics
+--------------
+cpu<N> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
+
+First field is a sched_yield() statistic:
+ 1) # of times sched_yield() was called
+
+Next three are schedule() statistics:
+ 2) This field is a legacy array expiration count field used in the O(1)
+ scheduler. We kept it for ABI compatibility, but it is always set to zero.
+ 3) # of times schedule() was called
+ 4) # of times schedule() left the processor idle
+
+Next two are try_to_wake_up() statistics:
+ 5) # of times try_to_wake_up() was called
+ 6) # of times try_to_wake_up() was called to wake up the local cpu
+
+Next three are statistics describing scheduling latency:
+ 7) sum of all time spent running by tasks on this processor (in jiffies)
+ 8) sum of all time spent waiting to run by tasks on this processor (in
+ jiffies)
+ 9) # of timeslices run on this cpu
+
+
+Domain statistics
+-----------------
+One of these is produced per domain for each cpu described. (Note that if
+CONFIG_SMP is not defined, *no* domains are utilized and these lines
+will not appear in the output.)
+
+domain<N> <cpumask> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
+
+The first field is a bit mask indicating what cpus this domain operates over.
+
+The next 24 are a variety of load_balance() statistics in grouped into types
+of idleness (idle, busy, and newly idle):
+
+ 1) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called when the
+ cpu was idle
+ 2) # of times in this domain load_balance() checked but found
+ the load did not require balancing when the cpu was idle
+ 3) # of times in this domain load_balance() tried to move one or
+ more tasks and failed, when the cpu was idle
+ 4) sum of imbalances discovered (if any) with each call to
+ load_balance() in this domain when the cpu was idle
+ 5) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called when the cpu
+ was idle
+ 6) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called even though
+ the target task was cache-hot when idle
+ 7) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called but did
+ not find a busier queue while the cpu was idle
+ 8) # of times in this domain a busier queue was found while the
+ cpu was idle but no busier group was found
+
+ 9) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called when the
+ cpu was busy
+ 10) # of times in this domain load_balance() checked but found the
+ load did not require balancing when busy
+ 11) # of times in this domain load_balance() tried to move one or
+ more tasks and failed, when the cpu was busy
+ 12) sum of imbalances discovered (if any) with each call to
+ load_balance() in this domain when the cpu was busy
+ 13) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called when busy
+ 14) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called even though the
+ target task was cache-hot when busy
+ 15) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called but did not
+ find a busier queue while the cpu was busy
+ 16) # of times in this domain a busier queue was found while the cpu
+ was busy but no busier group was found
+
+ 17) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called when the
+ cpu was just becoming idle
+ 18) # of times in this domain load_balance() checked but found the
+ load did not require balancing when the cpu was just becoming idle
+ 19) # of times in this domain load_balance() tried to move one or more
+ tasks and failed, when the cpu was just becoming idle
+ 20) sum of imbalances discovered (if any) with each call to
+ load_balance() in this domain when the cpu was just becoming idle
+ 21) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called when newly idle
+ 22) # of times in this domain pull_task() was called even though the
+ target task was cache-hot when just becoming idle
+ 23) # of times in this domain load_balance() was called but did not
+ find a busier queue while the cpu was just becoming idle
+ 24) # of times in this domain a busier queue was found while the cpu
+ was just becoming idle but no busier group was found
+
+ Next three are active_load_balance() statistics:
+ 25) # of times active_load_balance() was called
+ 26) # of times active_load_balance() tried to move a task and failed
+ 27) # of times active_load_balance() successfully moved a task
+
+ Next three are sched_balance_exec() statistics:
+ 28) sbe_cnt is not used
+ 29) sbe_balanced is not used
+ 30) sbe_pushed is not used
+
+ Next three are sched_balance_fork() statistics:
+ 31) sbf_cnt is not used
+ 32) sbf_balanced is not used
+ 33) sbf_pushed is not used
+
+ Next three are try_to_wake_up() statistics:
+ 34) # of times in this domain try_to_wake_up() awoke a task that
+ last ran on a different cpu in this domain
+ 35) # of times in this domain try_to_wake_up() moved a task to the
+ waking cpu because it was cache-cold on its own cpu anyway
+ 36) # of times in this domain try_to_wake_up() started passive balancing
+
+/proc/<pid>/schedstat
+----------------
+schedstats also adds a new /proc/<pid>/schedstat file to include some of
+the same information on a per-process level. There are three fields in
+this file correlating for that process to:
+ 1) time spent on the cpu
+ 2) time spent waiting on a runqueue
+ 3) # of timeslices run on this cpu
+
+A program could be easily written to make use of these extra fields to
+report on how well a particular process or set of processes is faring
+under the scheduler's policies. A simple version of such a program is
+available at
+ http://eaglet.rain.com/rick/linux/schedstat/v12/latency.c