CFS Bandwidth Control ===================== [ This document only discusses CPU bandwidth control for SCHED_NORMAL. The SCHED_RT case is covered in Documentation/scheduler/sched-rt-group.txt ] CFS bandwidth control is a CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED extension which allows the specification of the maximum CPU bandwidth available to a group or hierarchy. The bandwidth allowed for a group is specified using a quota, period and burst. Within each given "period" (microseconds), a group is filled with "quota" microseconds of CPU time. If the group has consumed less than that in a period, unused "quota" will be accumulated and allowd to be used in the following periods. A cap "burst" should be set by user via cpu.cfs_burst_us. The accumulated CPU time won't exceed this time. When the CPU bandwidth consumption of a group exceeds its limit, the tasks belonging to its hierarchy will be throttled and are not allowed to run again until the next period. A group's unused runtime is globally tracked, being refreshed with quota units above at each period boundary. As threads consume this bandwidth it is transferred to cpu-local "silos" on a demand basis. The amount transferred within each of these updates is tunable and described as the "slice". Management ---------- Quota, period and burst are managed within the cpu subsystem via cgroupfs. cpu.cfs_quota_us: the total available run-time within a period (in microseconds) cpu.cfs_period_us: the length of a period (in microseconds) cpu.cfs_burst_us: the maximum accumulated run-time cpu.stat: exports throttling statistics [explained further below] The default values are: cpu.cfs_period_us=100ms cpu.cfs_quota_us=-1 cpu.cfs_burst_us=-1 A value of -1 for cpu.cfs_quota_us indicates that the group does not have any bandwidth restriction in place, such a group is described as an unconstrained bandwidth group. This represents the traditional work-conserving behavior for CFS. Writing any (valid) positive value(s) into cpu.cfs_quota_us will enact the specified bandwidth limit. The minimum quota allowed for the quota or period is 1ms. There is also an upper bound on the period length of 1s. Additional restrictions exist when bandwidth limits are used in a hierarchical fashion, these are explained in more detail below. A value of 0 for cpu.cfs_burst_us indicates that the group can not accumulate any unused bandwidth. This represents the traditional bandwidth control behavior for CFS. Writing any (valid) positive value(s) into cpu.cfs_burst_us will enact the cap on unused bandwidth accumulation. Writing any negative value to cpu.cfs_quota_us will remove the bandwidth limit and return the group to an unconstrained state once more. Any updates to a group's bandwidth specification will result in it becoming unthrottled if it is in a constrained state. System wide settings -------------------- For efficiency run-time is transferred between the global pool and CPU local "silos" in a batch fashion. This greatly reduces global accounting pressure on large systems. The amount transferred each time such an update is required is described as the "slice". This is tunable via procfs: /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bandwidth_slice_us (default=5ms) Larger slice values will reduce transfer overheads, while smaller values allow for more fine-grained consumption. There is also a global switch to turn off burst for all groups: /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bw_burst_enabled (default=1) By default it is enabled. Write 0 values means no accumulated CPU time can be used for any group, even if cpu.cfs_burst_us is configured. Sometimes users might want a group to burst without accumulation. This is tunable via: /proc/sys/kernel/sched_cfs_bw_burst_onset_percent (default=0) Up to 100% runtime of cpu.cfs_burst_us might be given on setting bandwidth. Statistics ---------- A group's bandwidth statistics are exported via 7 fields in cpu.stat. cpu.stat: - nr_periods: Number of enforcement intervals that have elapsed. - nr_throttled: Number of times the group has been throttled/limited. - throttled_time: The total time duration (in nanoseconds) for which entities of the group have been throttled. - wait_sum: The total time duration (in nanoseconds) for which entities of the group have been waiting. - current_bw: Current runtime in global pool. - nr_burst: Number of periods burst occurs. - burst_time: Cumulative wall-time that any cpus has used above quota in respective periods This interface is read-only. Hierarchical considerations --------------------------- The interface enforces that an individual entity's bandwidth is always attainable, that is: max(c_i) <= C. However, over-subscription in the aggregate case is explicitly allowed to enable work-conserving semantics within a hierarchy. e.g. \Sum (c_i) may exceed C [ Where C is the parent's bandwidth, and c_i its children ] There are two ways in which a group may become throttled: a. it fully consumes its own quota within a period b. a parent's quota is fully consumed within its period In case b) above, even though the child may have runtime remaining it will not be allowed to until the parent's runtime is refreshed. CFS Bandwidth Quota Caveats --------------------------- Once a slice is assigned to a cpu it does not expire. However all but 1ms of the slice may be returned to the global pool if all threads on that cpu become unrunnable. This is configured at compile time by the min_cfs_rq_runtime variable. This is a performance tweak that helps prevent added contention on the global lock. The fact that cpu-local slices do not expire results in some interesting corner cases that should be understood. For cgroup cpu constrained applications that are cpu limited this is a relatively moot point because they will naturally consume the entirety of their quota as well as the entirety of each cpu-local slice in each period. As a result it is expected that nr_periods roughly equal nr_throttled, and that cpuacct.usage will increase roughly equal to cfs_quota_us in each period. For highly-threaded, non-cpu bound applications this non-expiration nuance allows applications to briefly burst past their quota limits by the amount of unused slice on each cpu that the task group is running on (typically at most 1ms per cpu or as defined by min_cfs_rq_runtime). This slight burst only applies if quota had been assigned to a cpu and then not fully used or returned in previous periods. This burst amount will not be transferred between cores. As a result, this mechanism still strictly limits the task group to quota average usage, albeit over a longer time window than a single period. This also limits the burst ability to no more than 1ms per cpu. This provides better more predictable user experience for highly threaded applications with small quota limits on high core count machines. It also eliminates the propensity to throttle these applications while simultanously using less than quota amounts of cpu. Another way to say this, is that by allowing the unused portion of a slice to remain valid across periods we have decreased the possibility of wastefully expiring quota on cpu-local silos that don't need a full slice's amount of cpu time. The interaction between cpu-bound and non-cpu-bound-interactive applications should also be considered, especially when single core usage hits 100%. If you gave each of these applications half of a cpu-core and they both got scheduled on the same CPU it is theoretically possible that the non-cpu bound application will use up to 1ms additional quota in some periods, thereby preventing the cpu-bound application from fully using its quota by that same amount. In these instances it will be up to the CFS algorithm (see sched-design-CFS.rst) to decide which application is chosen to run, as they will both be runnable and have remaining quota. This runtime discrepancy will be made up in the following periods when the interactive application idles. Examples -------- 1. Limit a group to 1 CPU worth of runtime. If period is 250ms and quota is also 250ms, the group will get 1 CPU worth of runtime every 250ms. # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 250ms */ # echo 250000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 250ms */ 2. Limit a group to 2 CPUs worth of runtime on a multi-CPU machine. With 500ms period and 1000ms quota, the group can get 2 CPUs worth of runtime every 500ms. # echo 1000000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 1000ms */ # echo 500000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 500ms */ The larger period here allows for increased burst capacity. 3. Limit a group to 20% of 1 CPU. With 50ms period, 10ms quota will be equivalent to 20% of 1 CPU. # echo 10000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 10ms */ # echo 50000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 50ms */ By using a small period here we are ensuring a consistent latency response at the expense of burst capacity. 4. Limit a group to 20% of 1 CPU, and allow accumulate up to 60% of 1 CPU addtionally, in case accumulation has been done. With 50ms period, 10ms quota will be equivalent to 20% of 1 CPU. And 30ms burst will be equivalent to 60% of 1 CPU. # echo 10000 > cpu.cfs_quota_us /* quota = 10ms */ # echo 50000 > cpu.cfs_period_us /* period = 50ms */ # echo 30000 > cpu.cfs_burst_us /* burst = 30ms */ Larger buffer setting allows greater burst capacity.