0001 =====================
0002 CFS Bandwidth Control
0003 =====================
0004
0005 .. note::
0006 This document only discusses CPU bandwidth control for SCHED_NORMAL.
0007 The SCHED_RT case is covered in Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.rst
0008
0009 CFS bandwidth control is a CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED extension which allows the
0010 specification of the maximum CPU bandwidth available to a group or hierarchy.
0011
0012 The bandwidth allowed for a group is specified using a quota and period. Within
0013 each given "period" (microseconds), a task group is allocated up to "quota"
0014 microseconds of CPU time. That quota is assigned to per-cpu run queues in
0015 slices as threads in the cgroup become runnable. Once all quota has been
0016 assigned any additional requests for quota will result in those threads being
0017 throttled. Throttled threads will not be able to run again until the next
0018 period when the quota is replenished.
0019
0020 A group's unassigned quota is globally tracked, being refreshed back to
0021 cfs_quota units at each period boundary. As threads consume this bandwidth it
0022 is transferred to cpu-local "silos" on a demand basis. The amount transferred
0023 within each of these updates is tunable and described as the "slice".
0024
0025 Burst feature
0026 -------------
0027 This feature borrows time now against our future underrun, at the cost of
0028 increased interference against the other system users. All nicely bounded.
0029
0030 Traditional (UP-EDF) bandwidth control is something like:
0031
0032 (U = \Sum u_i) <= 1
0033
0034 This guaranteeds both that every deadline is met and that the system is
0035 stable. After all, if U were > 1, then for every second of walltime,
0036 we'd have to run more than a second of program time, and obviously miss
0037 our deadline, but the next deadline will be further out still, there is
0038 never time to catch up, unbounded fail.
0039
0040 The burst feature observes that a workload doesn't always executes the full
0041 quota; this enables one to describe u_i as a statistical distribution.
0042
0043 For example, have u_i = {x,e}_i, where x is the p(95) and x+e p(100)
0044 (the traditional WCET). This effectively allows u to be smaller,
0045 increasing the efficiency (we can pack more tasks in the system), but at
0046 the cost of missing deadlines when all the odds line up. However, it
0047 does maintain stability, since every overrun must be paired with an
0048 underrun as long as our x is above the average.
0049
0050 That is, suppose we have 2 tasks, both specify a p(95) value, then we
0051 have a p(95)*p(95) = 90.25% chance both tasks are within their quota and
0052 everything is good. At the same time we have a p(5)p(5) = 0.25% chance
0053 both tasks will exceed their quota at the same time (guaranteed deadline
0054 fail). Somewhere in between there's a threshold where one exceeds and
0055 the other doesn't underrun enough to compensate; this depends on the
0056 specific CDFs.
0057
0058 At the same time, we can say that the worst case deadline miss, will be
0059 \Sum e_i; that is, there is a bounded tardiness (under the assumption
0060 that x+e is indeed WCET).
0061
0062 The interferenece when using burst is valued by the possibilities for
0063 missing the deadline and the average WCET. Test results showed that when
0064 there many cgroups or CPU is under utilized, the interference is
0065 limited. More details are shown in:
0066 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/5371BD36-55AE-4F71-B9D7-B86DC32E3D2B@linux.alibaba.com/
0067
0068 Management
0069 ----------
0070 Quota, period and burst are managed within the cpu subsystem via cgroupfs.
0071
0072 .. note::
0073 The cgroupfs files described in this section are only applicable
0074 to cgroup v1. For cgroup v2, see
0075 :ref:`Documentation/admin-guide/cgroup-v2.rst <cgroup-v2-cpu>`.
0076
0077 - cpu.cfs_quota_us: run-time replenished within a period (in microseconds)
0078 - cpu.cfs_period_us: the length of a period (in microseconds)
0079 - cpu.stat: exports throttling statistics [explained further below]
0080 - cpu.cfs_burst_us: the maximum accumulated run-time (in microseconds)
0081
0082 The default values are::
0083
0084 cpu.cfs_period_us=100ms
0085 cpu.cfs_quota_us=-1
0086 cpu.cfs_burst_us=0
0087
0088 A value of -1 for cpu.cfs_quota_us indicates that the group does not have any
0089 bandwidth restriction in place, such a group is described as an unconstrained
0090 bandwidth group. This represents the traditional work-conserving behavior for
0091 CFS.
0092
0093 Writing any (valid) positive value(s) no smaller than cpu.cfs_burst_us will
0094 enact the specified bandwidth limit. The minimum quota allowed for the quota or
0095 period is 1ms. There is also an upper bound on the period length of 1s.
0096 Additional restrictions exist when bandwidth limits are used in a hierarchical
0097 fashion, these are explained in more detail below.
0098
0099 Writing any negative value to cpu.cfs_quota_us will remove the bandwidth limit
0100 and return the group to an unconstrained state once more.
0101
0102 A value of 0 for cpu.cfs_burst_us indicates that the group can not accumulate
0103 any unused bandwidth. It makes the traditional bandwidth control behavior for
0104 CFS unchanged. Writing any (valid) positive value(s) no larger than
0105 cpu.cfs_quota_us into cpu.cfs_burst_us will enact the cap on unused bandwidth
0106 accumulation.
0107
0108 Any updates to a group's bandwidth specification will result in it becoming
0109 unthrottled if it is in a constrained state.
0110
0111 System wide settings
0112 --------------------
0113 For efficiency run-time is transferred between the global pool and CPU local
0114 "silos" in a batch fashion. This greatly reduces global accounting pressure
0115 on large systems. The amount transferred each time such an update is required
0116 is described as the "slice".
0117
0118 This is tunable via procfs::
0119
0120 /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bandwidth_slice_us (default=5ms)
0121
0122 Larger slice values will reduce transfer overheads, while smaller values allow
0123 for more fine-grained consumption.
0124
0125 Statistics
0126 ----------
0127 A group's bandwidth statistics are exported via 5 fields in cpu.stat.
0128
0129 cpu.stat:
0130
0131 - nr_periods: Number of enforcement intervals that have elapsed.
0132 - nr_throttled: Number of times the group has been throttled/limited.
0133 - throttled_time: The total time duration (in nanoseconds) for which entities
0134 of the group have been throttled.
0135 - nr_bursts: Number of periods burst occurs.
0136 - burst_time: Cumulative wall-time (in nanoseconds) that any CPUs has used
0137 above quota in respective periods.
0138
0139 This interface is read-only.
0140
0141 Hierarchical considerations
0142 ---------------------------
0143 The interface enforces that an individual entity's bandwidth is always
0144 attainable, that is: max(c_i) <= C. However, over-subscription in the
0145 aggregate case is explicitly allowed to enable work-conserving semantics
0146 within a hierarchy:
0147
0148 e.g. \Sum (c_i) may exceed C
0149
0150 [ Where C is the parent's bandwidth, and c_i its children ]
0151
0152
0153 There are two ways in which a group may become throttled:
0154
0155 a. it fully consumes its own quota within a period
0156 b. a parent's quota is fully consumed within its period
0157
0158 In case b) above, even though the child may have runtime remaining it will not
0159 be allowed to until the parent's runtime is refreshed.
0160
0161 CFS Bandwidth Quota Caveats
0162 ---------------------------
0163 Once a slice is assigned to a cpu it does not expire. However all but 1ms of
0164 the slice may be returned to the global pool if all threads on that cpu become
0165 unrunnable. This is configured at compile time by the min_cfs_rq_runtime
0166 variable. This is a performance tweak that helps prevent added contention on
0167 the global lock.
0168
0169 The fact that cpu-local slices do not expire results in some interesting corner
0170 cases that should be understood.
0171
0172 For cgroup cpu constrained applications that are cpu limited this is a
0173 relatively moot point because they will naturally consume the entirety of their
0174 quota as well as the entirety of each cpu-local slice in each period. As a
0175 result it is expected that nr_periods roughly equal nr_throttled, and that
0176 cpuacct.usage will increase roughly equal to cfs_quota_us in each period.
0177
0178 For highly-threaded, non-cpu bound applications this non-expiration nuance
0179 allows applications to briefly burst past their quota limits by the amount of
0180 unused slice on each cpu that the task group is running on (typically at most
0181 1ms per cpu or as defined by min_cfs_rq_runtime). This slight burst only
0182 applies if quota had been assigned to a cpu and then not fully used or returned
0183 in previous periods. This burst amount will not be transferred between cores.
0184 As a result, this mechanism still strictly limits the task group to quota
0185 average usage, albeit over a longer time window than a single period. This
0186 also limits the burst ability to no more than 1ms per cpu. This provides
0187 better more predictable user experience for highly threaded applications with
0188 small quota limits on high core count machines. It also eliminates the
0189 propensity to throttle these applications while simultanously using less than
0190 quota amounts of cpu. Another way to say this, is that by allowing the unused
0191 portion of a slice to remain valid across periods we have decreased the
0192 possibility of wastefully expiring quota on cpu-local silos that don't need a
0193 full slice's amount of cpu time.
0194
0195 The interaction between cpu-bound and non-cpu-bound-interactive applications
0196 should also be considered, especially when single core usage hits 100%. If you
0197 gave each of these applications half of a cpu-core and they both got scheduled
0198 on the same CPU it is theoretically possible that the non-cpu bound application
0199 will use up to 1ms additional quota in some periods, thereby preventing the
0200 cpu-bound application from fully using its quota by that same amount. In these
0201 instances it will be up to the CFS algorithm (see sched-design-CFS.rst) to
0202 decide which application is chosen to run, as they will both be runnable and
0203 have remaining quota. This runtime discrepancy will be made up in the following
0204 periods when the interactive application idles.
0205
0206 Examples
0207 --------
0208 1. Limit a group to 1 CPU worth of runtime::
0209
0210 If period is 250ms and quota is also 250ms, the group will get
0211 1 CPU worth of runtime every 250ms.
0212
0213 # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 250ms */
0214 # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 250ms */
0215
0216 2. Limit a group to 2 CPUs worth of runtime on a multi-CPU machine
0217
0218 With 500ms period and 1000ms quota, the group can get 2 CPUs worth of
0219 runtime every 500ms::
0220
0221 # echo 1000000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 1000ms */
0222 # echo 500000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 500ms */
0223
0224 The larger period here allows for increased burst capacity.
0225
0226 3. Limit a group to 20% of 1 CPU.
0227
0228 With 50ms period, 10ms quota will be equivalent to 20% of 1 CPU::
0229
0230 # echo 10000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 10ms */
0231 # echo 50000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 50ms */
0232
0233 By using a small period here we are ensuring a consistent latency
0234 response at the expense of burst capacity.
0235
0236 4. Limit a group to 40% of 1 CPU, and allow accumulate up to 20% of 1 CPU
0237 additionally, in case accumulation has been done.
0238
0239 With 50ms period, 20ms quota will be equivalent to 40% of 1 CPU.
0240 And 10ms burst will be equivalent to 20% of 1 CPU::
0241
0242 # echo 20000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 20ms */
0243 # echo 50000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 50ms */
0244 # echo 10000 > cpu.cfs_burst_us /* burst = 10ms */
0245
0246 Larger buffer setting (no larger than quota) allows greater burst capacity.