x86, rcu: fix strange load average and ksoftirqd behavior

Damien Wyart reported high ksoftirqd CPU usage (20%) on an
otherwise idle system.

The function-graph trace Damien provided:

>   799.521187 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.521371 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.521555 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.521738 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.521934 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522068 |   1)  ksoftir-2324  |               |                rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522208 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522392 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522575 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522759 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.522956 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523074 |   1)  ksoftir-2324  |               |                  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523214 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523397 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523579 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523762 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.523960 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.524079 |   1)  ksoftir-2324  |               |                  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.524220 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.524403 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.524587 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
>   799.524770 |   1)    <idle>-0    |               |  rcu_check_callbacks() {
> [ . . . ]

Shows rcu_check_callbacks() being invoked way too often. It should be called
once per jiffy, and here it is called no less than 22 times in about
3.5 milliseconds, meaning one call every 160 microseconds or so.

Why do we need to call rcu_pending() and rcu_check_callbacks() from the
idle loop of 32-bit x86, especially given that no other architecture does
this?

The following patch removes the call to rcu_pending() and
rcu_check_callbacks() from the x86 32-bit idle loop in order to
reduce the softirq load on idle systems.

Reported-by: Damien Wyart <damien.wyart@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c b/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c
index a546f55c77b4639f5e3f5773a1599d81cc53432d..bd4da2af08aec72ff1933eea7164a2b3d8f73139 100644 (file)
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c
@@ -104,9 +104,6 @@ void cpu_idle(void)
                        check_pgt_cache();
                        rmb();
 
-                       if (rcu_pending(cpu))
-                               rcu_check_callbacks(cpu, 0);
-
                        if (cpu_is_offline(cpu))
                                play_dead();