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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Add a timer mode that disables pending missed ticks



Dan,

I did some testing with the constant tsc offset SYNC method (now called no_missed_ticks_pending)
and found the error to be very high, much larger than 1 %, as I recall.
I have not had a chance to submit a correction. I will try to do it later
this week or the first week in January. My version of constant tsc offset SYNC method
produces .02 % error, so I just need to port that into the current code.

The error you got for both of those kernels is what I would expect
for the default mode, delay_for_missed_ticks.

I'll let Keir answer on how to set the time mode.

Regards,
Dave

Dan Magenheimer wrote:

Anyone make measurements on the final patch?

I just ran a 64-bit RHEL5.1 pvm kernel and saw a loss of about 0.2% with no 
load.  This was xen-unstable tip today with no options specified.  32-bit was 
about 0.01%.

I think I missed something... how do I run the various accounting choices and 
which ones are known to be appropriate for which kernels?

Thanks,
Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Keir Fraser
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 4:57 AM
To: Dave Winchell
Cc: Shan, Haitao; xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Dong, Eddie; Jiang,
Yunhong
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Add a timer mode that disables pending
missed ticks


Please take a look at xen-unstable changeset 16545.

-- Keir

On 26/11/07 20:57, "Dave Winchell" <dwinchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Keir,

The accuracy data I've collected for i/o loads for the
various time protocols follows. In addition, the data
for cpu loads is shown.

The loads labeled cpu and i/o-8 are on an 8 processor AMD box.
Two guests, red hat and sles 64 bit, 8 vcpu each.
The cpu load is usex -e36 on each guest.
(usex is available at http://people.redhat.com/anderson/usex.)
i/o load is 8 instances of dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/dev/null.

The loads labeled i/o-32 are 32 instances of dd.
Also, these are run on 4 cpu AMD box.
In addition, there is an idle rh-32bit guest.
All three guests are 8vcpu.

The loads labeled i/o-4/32 are the same as i/o-32
except that the redhat-64 guest has 4 instances of dd.

Date Duration Protocol sles, rhat error load

11/07 23 hrs 40 min ASYNC -4.96 sec, +4.42 sec -.006%, +.005% cpu
11/09 3 hrs 19 min ASYNC -.13 sec, +1.44 sec, -.001%, +.012% cpu

11/08 2 hrs 21 min SYNC -.80 sec, -.34 sec, -.009%, -.004% cpu
11/08 1 hr 25 min SYNC -.24 sec, -.26 sec, -.005%, -.005% cpu
11/12 65 hrs 40 min SYNC -18 sec, -8 sec, -.008%, -.003% cpu

11/08 28 min MIXED -.75 sec, -.67 sec -.045%, -.040% cpu
11/08 15 hrs 39 min MIXED -19. sec,-17.4 sec, -.034%, -.031% cpu


11/14 17 hrs 17 min ASYNC -6.1 sec,-55.7 sec, -.01%, -.09% i/o-8
11/15 2 hrs 44 min ASYNC -1.47 sec,-14.0 sec, -.015% -.14% i/o-8

11/13 15 hrs 38 min SYNC -9.7 sec,-12.3 sec, -.017%, -.022% i/o-8
11/14 48 min SYNC - .46 sec, - .48 sec, -.017%, -.018% i/o-8

11/14 4 hrs 2 min MIXED -2.9 sec, -4.15 sec, -.020%, -.029% i/o-8
11/20 16 hrs 2 min MIXED -13.4 sec,-18.1 sec, -.023%, -.031% i/o-8



11/21 28 min MIXED -2.01 sec, -.67 sec, -.12%, -.04% i/o-32
11/21 2 hrs 25 min SYNC -.96 sec, -.43 sec, -.011%, -.005% i/o-32
11/21 40 min ASYNC -2.43 sec, -2.77 sec -.10%, -.11% i/o-32

11/26 113 hrs 46 min MIXED -297. sec, 13. sec -.07%, .003% i/o-4/32
11/26 4 hrs 50 min SYNC -3.21 sec, 1.44 sec, -.017%, .01% i/o-4/32


Overhead measurements:

Progress in terms of number of passes through a fixed
system workload
on an 8 vcpu red hat with an 8 vcpu sles idle.
The workload was usex -b48.


ASYNC 167 min 145 passes .868 passes/min
SYNC 167 min 144 passes .862 passes/min
SYNC 1065 min 919 passes .863 passes/min
MIXED 221 min 196 passes .887 passes/min


Conclusions:

The only protocol which meets the .05% accuracy requirement for ntp
tracking under the loads
above is the SYNC protocol. The worst case accuracies for
SYNC, MIXED,
and ASYNC
are .022%, .12%, and .14%, respectively.

We could reduce the cost of the SYNC method by only
scheduling the extra
wakeups if a certain number
of ticks are missed.

Regards,
Dave

Keir Fraser wrote:

On 9/11/07 19:22, "Dave Winchell"
<dwinchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Since I had a high error (~.03%) for the ASYNC method a
couple of days ago,
I ran another ASYNC test. I think there may have been something
wrong with the code I used a couple of days ago for
ASYNC. It may have been
missing the immediate delivery of interrupt after context
switch in.
My results indicate that either SYNC or ASYNC give
acceptable accuracy,
each running consistently around or under .01%. MIXED has
a fairly high
error of
greater than .03%. Probably too close to .05% ntp
threshold for comfort.
I don't have an overnight run with SYNC. I plan to leave
SYNC running
over the weekend. If you'd rather I can leave MIXED
running instead.
It may be too early to pick the protocol and I can run
more overnight tests
next week.


I'm a bit worried about any unwanted side effects of the
SYNC+run_timer
approach -- e.g., whether timer wakeups will cause higher
system-wide CPU
contention. I find it easier to think through the
implications of ASYNC. I'm
surprised that MIXED loses time, and is less accurate than
ASYNC. Perhaps it
delivers more timer interrupts than the other approaches,
and each interrupt
event causes a small accumulated error?

Overall I would consider MIXED and ASYNC as favourites and
if the latter is
actually more accurate then I can simply revert the changeset that
implemented MIXED.

Perhaps rather than running more of the same workloads you
could try idle
VCPUs and I/O bound VCPUs (e.g., repeated large disc reads
to /dev/null)? We
don't have any data on workloads that aren't CPU bound, so
that's really an
obvious place to put any further effort imo.

-- Keir





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