[dpdk-dev] [EXTERNAL] Re: Windows DPDK real-time priority threads causing thread starvation

Tal Shnaiderman talshn at nvidia.com
Wed Dec 16 15:53:18 CET 2020


It was suggested by DmitryM in the last DPDK Windows community call to have the priority parameter configurable (at least for Windows) to allow user to reduce the thread priority and avoid the issues mentioned below.

> Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: [dpdk-dev] Windows DPDK real-time priority
> threads causing thread starvation
> 
> There is a configuration in Windows similar to Linux isolcpus where scheduler
> tries not to run anything on such cores, and implementation is being
> enhanced for the next Windows release with User-mode vmswitch
> feedback.
> 
> I'll dig out the details.
> 
> Dmitry
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Hemminger <stephen at networkplumber.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, December 9, 2020 8:09 AM
> To: Tal Shnaiderman <talshn at nvidia.com>
> Cc: Dmitry Kozlyuk <dmitry.kozliuk at gmail.com>; Dmitry Malloy
> (MESHCHANINOV) <dmitrym at microsoft.com>; Narcisa Ana Maria Vasile
> <Narcisa.Vasile at microsoft.com>; Eilon Greenstein <eilong at nvidia.com>;
> Omar Cardona <ocardona at microsoft.com>; Rani Sharoni
> <ranish at nvidia.com>; Odi Assli <odia at nvidia.com>; Harini Ramakrishnan
> <Harini.Ramakrishnan at microsoft.com>; thomas <thomas at monjalon.net>;
> dev at dpdk.org
> Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [dpdk-dev] Windows DPDK real-time priority
> threads causing thread starvation
> 
> On Wed, 9 Dec 2020 14:15:30 +0000
> Tal Shnaiderman <talshn at nvidia.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > During our verification tests on Windows DPDK we've noticed that DPDK
> polling threads, which run in REALTIME_PRIORITY_CLASS are causing
> starvation to other threads from the OS which need to change affinity and
> run in lower priority.
> >
> > While running an application for a while we see the OS thread waits for 2:30
> minutes and raises a bugcheck, see below example of such flow:
> >
> > 1) DPDK thread running on core-0 in real-time high priority(24) polling
> mode.
> > 2) The thread is blocking the system function NtSetSystemInformation
> > (ExpUpdateTimerConfiguration) in another thread from
> >    switching to core-0 via KeSetSystemGroupAffinityThread since the
> > calling thread is priority 15.
> > 3) NtSetSystemInformation exclusively acquired system-wide lock
> > (ExpTimeRefreshLock) hence
> >     it blocks other threads (e.g. calling NtQuerySystemInformation).
> >
> > We've seen this behavior only while running on Windows 2019 VMs, maybe
> on native machines OS scheduling of such flow is done differently?
> >
> > Below is usage explanation from the documentation of SetPriorityClass [1]:
> >
> > - REALTIME_PRIORITY_CLASS
> > Process that has the highest possible priority. The threads of the process
> preempt the threads of all other processes, including operating system
> processes performing important tasks. For example, a real-time process that
> executes for more than a very brief interval can cause disk caches not to
> flush or cause the mouse to be unresponsive.
> >
> > So I assume using this kind of thread for a long period as we do can cause
> unstable behavior.
> >
> > How do you think we can resolve this? Are there such cases in Linux?
> >
> > [1] -
> >
> https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs
> > .microsoft.com%2Fen-
> us%2Fwindows%2Fwin32%2Fapi%2Fprocessthreadsapi%2Fn
> > f-processthreadsapi-
> setpriorityclass&data=04%7C01%7Cdmitrym%40micr
> >
> osoft.com%7C623844c12bc2440d3bbd08d89c5cc0f1%7C72f988bf86f141af91a
> b2d7
> >
> cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637431269479649074%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb
> 3d8eyJWIjo
> >
> iMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C10
> 00&amp
> >
> ;sdata=LSv%2F%2BZMxUkfgcQVD778wL4JbVdl2qYV1tHdfVrEck4c%3D&r
> eserved
> > =0
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Tal.
> 
> This is not unique to Windows, Linux has same thing when using
> SCHED_FIFO.
> Setting REALTIME is not a magic "go fast" flag it tells scheduler to "run this
> thread at higher priority than kernel".  Setting real time is not compatible
> with applications doing 100% polling.
> 
> If you have to use REALTIME then application must change to doing
> sleep/wakeup type architecture, not pure polling.
> 
> Typical DPDK style application is incompatible with SCHED_FIFO/SCHED_RR.


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