tree ad8e68882f7c36216e16ab264101c5da96ccd5c9
parent 3055addadbe9bfb2365006a1c13fd342a8d30d52
author Jack Steiner <steiner@sgi.com> 1143801081 -0800
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org> 1143836338 -0800

[PATCH] sched: reduce overhead of calc_load

Currently, count_active_tasks() calls both nr_running() &
nr_interruptible().  Each of these functions does a "for_each_cpu" & reads
values from the runqueue of each cpu.  Although this is not a lot of
instructions, each runqueue may be located on different node.  Depending on
the architecture, a unique TLB entry may be required to access each
runqueue.

Since there may be more runqueues than cpu TLB entries, a scan of all
runqueues can trash the TLB.  Each memory reference incurs a TLB miss &
refill.

In addition, the runqueue cacheline that contains nr_running &
nr_uninterruptible may be evicted from the cache between the two passes.
This causes unnecessary cache misses.

Combining nr_running() & nr_interruptible() into a single function
substantially reduces the TLB & cache misses on large systems.  This should
have no measureable effect on smaller systems.

On a 128p IA64 system running a memory stress workload, the new function
reduced the overhead of calc_load() from 605 usec/call to 324 usec/call.

Signed-off-by: Jack Steiner <steiner@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>