Public bug reported:

[Impact]

On Vera systems, concurrent task wakeups can place CPU-intensive work on
sibling threads of the same SMT core while other physical cores remain
idle. This SMT contention can reduce performance for workloads intended
to run one thread per core.

[Fix]

Stabilize idle-core CPU selection so concurrent wakeups consistently
select the same SMT-core representative, allowing the scheduler to avoid
unintended sibling placement and improving CPU-intensive workload
performance on Vera.

This approach has been proposed upstream:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/

We may have follow-ups, but for now applying this patch fixes the issue
and can significantly improve performance of CPU-bound workloads.

[Test plan]

Tests have been conducted on NVIDIA Vera Rubin (arm64, 176 CPUs/88 cores
per NUMA node) using a CPU-intensive NVPL SGEMM workload restricted to
88 threads (one per core); the workload showed a consistent 23% increase
in mean throughput across multiple runs with the fix applied.

[Regression potential]

This change affects only asymmetric CPU systems with SMT enabled,
essentially only Vera Rubin. Certain wakeup-heavy workloads under
partially idle conditions may experience small regressions due to
transient runqueue contention. However, such workloads are not
representative of the typical use cases for this platform.

** Affects: linux-nvidia-bos (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Affects: linux-nvidia-bos (Ubuntu Noble)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Affects: linux-nvidia-bos (Ubuntu Resolute)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Also affects: linux-nvidia-bos (Ubuntu Resolute)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: linux-nvidia-bos (Ubuntu Noble)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Summary changed:

- Prevent SMT contention on Vera
+ Reduce SMT contention on Vera

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2158811

Title:
  Reduce SMT contention on Vera

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-nvidia-bos/+bug/2158811/+subscriptions


-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to