cpuset sched_load_balance flag

Add a new per-cpuset flag called 'sched_load_balance'.

When enabled in a cpuset (the default value) it tells the kernel scheduler
that the scheduler should provide the normal load balancing on the CPUs in
that cpuset, sometimes moving tasks from one CPU to a second CPU if the
second CPU is less loaded and if that task is allowed to run there.

When disabled (write "0" to the file) then it tells the kernel scheduler
that load balancing is not required for the CPUs in that cpuset.

Now even if this flag is disabled for some cpuset, the kernel may still
have to load balance some or all the CPUs in that cpuset, if some
overlapping cpuset has its sched_load_balance flag enabled.

If there are some CPUs that are not in any cpuset whose sched_load_balance
flag is enabled, the kernel scheduler will not load balance tasks to those
CPUs.

Moreover the kernel will partition the 'sched domains' (non-overlapping
sets of CPUs over which load balancing is attempted) into the finest
granularity partition that it can find, while still keeping any two CPUs
that are in the same shed_load_balance enabled cpuset in the same element
of the partition.

This serves two purposes:
 1) It provides a mechanism for real time isolation of some CPUs, and
 2) it can be used to improve performance on systems with many CPUs
    by supporting configurations in which load balancing is not done
    across all CPUs at once, but rather only done in several smaller
    disjoint sets of CPUs.

This mechanism replaces the earlier overloading of the per-cpuset
flag 'cpu_exclusive', which overloading was removed in an earlier
patch: cpuset-remove-sched-domain-hooks-from-cpusets

See further the Documentation and comments in the code itself.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: don't be weird]
Signed-off-by: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
index cbd8731a66e..4bbbe12880d 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched.h
@@ -737,6 +737,8 @@ struct sched_domain {
 #endif
 };
 
+extern void partition_sched_domains(int ndoms_new, cpumask_t *doms_new);
+
 #endif	/* CONFIG_SMP */
 
 /*