Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 1/3] cpu: Provide vcpu throttling interface

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Jason J. Herne (address@hidden) wrote:
> On 06/03/2015 02:11 PM, Jason J. Herne wrote:
> >On 06/03/2015 02:03 PM, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> >>* Jason J. Herne (address@hidden) wrote:
> >>>On 06/03/2015 03:56 AM, Juan Quintela wrote:
> >>>>"Jason J. Herne" <address@hidden> wrote:
> >...
> >>>>We are checking for throotling on each cpu each 10ms.
> >>>>But on patch 2 we can see that we only change the throotling each
> >>>>time that we call migration_bitmap_sync(), that only happens each round
> >>>>through all the pages. Normally auto-converge only matters for machines
> >>>>with lots of memory, so this is going to happen each more than 10ms (we
> >>>>change it each 4 passes).  You changed it to each 2 passes, and you add
> >>>>it a 0.2.  I think  that I would preffer to just have it each single
> >>>>pass, but add a 0.1 each pass?  simpler and end result would be the
> >>>>same?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>Well, we certainly could make it run every pass but I think it would get
> >>>a little too aggressive then. The reason is, we do not increment the
> >>>throttle
> >>>rate by adding 0.2 each time. We increment it by multiplying the current
> >>>rate
> >>>by 2. So by doing that every pass we are doubling the exponential growth
> >>>rate. I will admit the numbers I chose are hardly scientific... I
> >>>chose them
> >>>because they seemed to provide a decent balance of "throttling
> >>>aggression"
> >>>in
> >>>my workloads.
> >>
> >>That's the advantage of making them parameters.
> >
> >I see your point. Expecting the user to configure these parameters
> >seems a bit much. But I guess, in theory, it is better to have the
> >ability to change them and not need it, than need it and not have it
> >right?
> >
> >So, as you stated earlier these should hook into MigrationParams
> >somehow? I'll admit this is the first I've seen this construct. If
> >this is the optimal location for the two controls (x-throttle-initial,
> >x-throttle-multiplier?) I can add them there. Will keep defaults of
> >0.2 for initial and 2.0 for multiplier(is there a better name?)?
> >
> 
> So I'm attempting add the initial throttle value and the multiplier to
> MigrationParameters and I've come across a problem.
> hmp_migrate_set_parameter assumes all parameters are ints. Apparently
> floating point is not allowed...
> 
>     void hmp_migrate_set_parameter(Monitor *mon, const QDict *qdict)
>     {
>         const char *param = qdict_get_str(qdict, "parameter");
>         int value = qdict_get_int(qdict, "value");
> 
> Also from hmp-commands.hx
> 
>     {
>         .name       = "migrate_set_parameter",
>         .args_type  = "parameter:s,value:i",
>         .params     = "parameter value",
>         .help       = "Set the parameter for migration",
>         .mhandler.cmd = hmp_migrate_set_parameter,
>         .command_completion = migrate_set_parameter_completion,
>     },
> 
> I'm hoping someone already has an idea for dealing with this problem? If
> not, I suppose this is a good add-on for Dave's discussion on redesigning
> MigrationParameters.

Oh, that's yet another problem; hadn't thought about this one.
I don't think the suggestions I had in the previous mail would help that one
either;   It might work if you flipped the type to 's' and then parsed
that in the hmp code.

(cc'ing Markus in)
Dave

> 
> -- 
> -- Jason J. Herne (address@hidden)
> 
--
Dr. David Alan Gilbert / address@hidden / Manchester, UK