tracing: Schedule a delayed work to call wakeup()

In using syscall tracing by concurrent processes, the wakeup() that is
called in the event commit function causes contention on the spin lock
of the waitqueue. I enabled sys_enter_getuid and sys_exit_getuid
tracepoints, and by running getuid_microbench from autotest in parallel
I found that the contention causes exponential latency increase in the
tracing path.

The autotest binary getuid_microbench calls getuid() in a tight loop for
the given number of iterations and measures the average time required to
complete a single invocation of syscall.

The patch schedules a delayed work after 2 ms once an event commit calls
to wake up the trace wait_queue. This removes the delay caused by
contention on spin lock in wakeup() and amortizes the wakeup() calls
scheduled over the 2 ms period.

In the following example, the script enables the sys_enter_getuid and
sys_exit_getuid tracepoints and runs the getuid_microbench in parallel
with the given number of processes. The output clearly shows the latency
increase caused by contentions.

$ ~/getuid.sh 1
1000000 calls in 0.720974253 s (720.974253 ns/call)

$ ~/getuid.sh 2
1000000 calls in 1.166457554 s (1166.457554 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.168933765 s (1168.933765 ns/call)

$ ~/getuid.sh 3
1000000 calls in 1.783827516 s (1783.827516 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.795553270 s (1795.553270 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.796493376 s (1796.493376 ns/call)

$ ~/getuid.sh 4
1000000 calls in 4.483041796 s (4483.041796 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 4.484165388 s (4484.165388 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 4.484850762 s (4484.850762 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 4.485643576 s (4485.643576 ns/call)

$ ~/getuid.sh 5
1000000 calls in 6.497521653 s (6497.521653 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 6.502000236 s (6502.000236 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 6.501709115 s (6501.709115 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 6.502124100 s (6502.124100 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 6.502936358 s (6502.936358 ns/call)

After the patch, the latencies scale better.
1000000 calls in 0.728720455 s (728.720455 ns/call)

1000000 calls in 0.842782857 s (842.782857 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.883803135 s (883.803135 ns/call)

1000000 calls in 0.902077764 s (902.077764 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.902838202 s (902.838202 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.908896885 s (908.896885 ns/call)

1000000 calls in 0.932523515 s (932.523515 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.958009672 s (958.009672 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.986188020 s (986.188020 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.989771102 s (989.771102 ns/call)

1000000 calls in 0.933518391 s (933.518391 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 0.958897947 s (958.897947 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.031038897 s (1031.038897 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.089516025 s (1089.516025 ns/call)
1000000 calls in 1.141998347 s (1141.998347 ns/call)

Signed-off-by: Vaibhav Nagarnaik <vnagarnaik@google.com>
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Michael Rubin <mrubin@google.com>
Cc: David Sharp <dhsharp@google.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1305059241-7629-1-git-send-email-vnagarnaik@google.com
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 11 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace.c b/kernel/trace/trace.c
index ee9c921..71777c8 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/trace.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/trace.c
@@ -343,26 +343,27 @@ unsigned long trace_flags = TRACE_ITER_PRINT_PARENT | TRACE_ITER_PRINTK |
 static int trace_stop_count;
 static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(tracing_start_lock);
 
+static void wakeup_work_handler(struct work_struct *work)
+{
+	wake_up(&trace_wait);
+}
+
+static DECLARE_DELAYED_WORK(wakeup_work, wakeup_work_handler);
+
 /**
  * trace_wake_up - wake up tasks waiting for trace input
  *
- * Simply wakes up any task that is blocked on the trace_wait
- * queue. These is used with trace_poll for tasks polling the trace.
+ * Schedules a delayed work to wake up any task that is blocked on the
+ * trace_wait queue. These is used with trace_poll for tasks polling the
+ * trace.
  */
 void trace_wake_up(void)
 {
-	int cpu;
+	const unsigned long delay = msecs_to_jiffies(2);
 
 	if (trace_flags & TRACE_ITER_BLOCK)
 		return;
-	/*
-	 * The runqueue_is_locked() can fail, but this is the best we
-	 * have for now:
-	 */
-	cpu = get_cpu();
-	if (!runqueue_is_locked(cpu))
-		wake_up(&trace_wait);
-	put_cpu();
+	schedule_delayed_work(&wakeup_work, delay);
 }
 
 static int __init set_buf_size(char *str)