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Each CPU has a "base" scheduling domain (struct sched_domain). These are

accessed via cpu_sched_domain(i) and this_sched_domain() macros. The domain

hierarchy is built from these base domains via the ->parent pointer. ->parent

MUST be NULL terminated, and domain structures should be per-CPU as they

are locklessly updated.

Each scheduling domain spans a number of CPUs (stored in the ->span field).

A domain's span MUST be a superset of it child's span (this restriction could

be relaxed if the need arises), and a base domain for CPU i MUST span at least

i. The top domain for each CPU will generally span all CPUs in the system

although strictly it doesn't have to, but this could lead to a case where some

CPUs will never be given tasks to run unless the CPUs allowed mask is

explicitly set. A sched domain's span means "balance process load among these

CPUs".

Each scheduling domain must have one or more CPU groups (struct sched_group)

which are organised as a circular one way linked list from the ->groups

pointer. The union of cpumasks of these groups MUST be the same as the

domain's span. The intersection of cpumasks from any two of these groups

MUST be the empty set. The group pointed to by the ->groups pointer MUST

contain the CPU to which the domain belongs. Groups may be shared among

CPUs as they contain read only data after they have been set up.

Balancing within a sched domain occurs between groups. That is, each group

is treated as one entity. The load of a group is defined as the sum of the

load of each of its member CPUs, and only when the load of a group becomes

out of balance are tasks moved between groups.

In kernel/sched.c, rebalance_tick is run periodically on each CPU. This

function takes its CPU's base sched domain and checks to see if has reached

its rebalance interval. If so, then it will run load_balance on that domain.

rebalance_tick then checks the parent sched_domain (if it exists), and the

parent of the parent and so forth.

*** Implementing sched domains ***

The "base" domain will "span" the first level of the hierarchy. In the case

of SMT, you'll span all siblings of the physical CPU, with each group being

a single virtual CPU.

In SMP, the parent of the base domain will span all physical CPUs in the

node. Each group being a single physical CPU. Then with NUMA, the parent

of the SMP domain will span the entire machine, with each group having the

cpumask of a node. Or, you could do multi-level NUMA or Opteron, for example,

might have just one domain covering its one NUMA level.

The implementor should read comments in include/linux/sched.h:

struct sched_domain fields, SD_FLAG_*, SD_*_INIT to get an idea of

the specifics and what to tune.

For SMT, the architecture must define CONFIG_SCHED_SMT and provide a

cpumask_t cpu_sibling_map[NR_CPUS], where cpu_sibling_map[i] is the mask of

all "i"'s siblings as well as "i" itself.

Architectures may retain the regular override the default SD_*_INIT flags

while using the generic domain builder in kernel/sched.c if they wish to

retain the traditional SMT->SMP->NUMA topology (or some subset of that). This

can be done by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_TUNE.

Alternatively, the architecture may completely override the generic domain

builder by #define'ing ARCH_HASH_SCHED_DOMAIN, and exporting your

arch_init_sched_domains function. This function will attach domains to all

CPUs using cpu_attach_domain.

Implementors should change the line

#undef SCHED_DOMAIN_DEBUG

to

#define SCHED_DOMAIN_DEBUG

in kernel/sched.c as this enables an error checking parse of the sched domains

which should catch most possible errors (described above). It also prints out

the domain structure in a visual format.