In the init configuration one can configure the donation of CPU time via
'resource' tags that have the attribute 'name' set to "CPU" and the
attribute 'quantum' set to the percentage of CPU quota that init shall
donate. The pattern is the same as when donating RAM quota.
! <start name="test">
! <resource name="CPU" quantum="75"/>
! </start>
This would cause init to try donating 75% of its CPU quota to the child
"test". Init and core do not preserve CPU quota for their own
requirements by default as it is done with RAM quota.
The CPU quota that a process owns can be applied through the thread
constructor. The constructor has been enhanced by an argument that
indicates the percentage of the programs CPU quota that shall be granted
to the new thread. So 'Thread(33, "test")' would cause the backing CPU
session to try to grant 33% of the programs CPU quota to the thread
"test". By now, the CPU quota of a thread can't be altered after
construction. Constructing a thread with CPU quota 0 doesn't mean the
thread gets never scheduled but that the thread has no guaranty to receive
CPU time. Such threads have to live with excess CPU time.
Threads that already existed in the official repositories of Genode were
adapted in the way that they receive a quota of 0.
This commit also provides a run test 'cpu_quota' in base-hw (the only
kernel that applies the CPU-quota scheme currently). The test basically
runs three threads with different physical CPU quota. The threads simply
count for 30 seconds each and the test then checks wether the counter
values relate to the CPU-quota distribution.
fix#1275
Kernel::Processor was a confusing remnant from the old scheme where we had a
Processor_driver (now Genode::Cpu) and a Processor (now Kernel::Cpu).
This commit also updates the in-code documentation and the variable and
function naming accordingly.
fix#1274
The new scheduler serves the orthogonal requirements of both
high-throughput-oriented scheduling contexts (shortly called fill in the
scheduler) and low-latency-oriented scheduling contexts (shortly called
claim in the scheduler). Thus it knows two scheduling modes. Every claim
owns a CPU-time-quota expressed as percentage of a super period
(currently 1 second) and a priority that is absolute as long as the
claim has quota left for the current super period. At the end of a super
period the quota of all claims gets refreshed. During a super period,
the claim mode is dominant as long as any active claim has quota left.
Every time this isn't the case, the scheduler switches to scheduling of
fills. Fills are scheduled in a simple round robin with identical time
slices. Order and time-slices of the fill scheduling are not affected by
the super period. Now on thread creation, two arguments, priority and
quota are needed. If quota is 0, the new thread participates in CPU
scheduling with a fill only. Otherwise he participates with both a
claim and a fill. This concept dovetails nicely with Genodes quota based
resource management as any process can grant subsets of its own
CPU-time and priorities to its child without knowing the global means of
CPU-time and priority.
The commit also adds a run script that enables an automated unit test of the
scheduler implementation.
fix#1225
To serve the needs of the coming CPU scheduler, the double list needs
additional methods such as 'to_tail' and 'insert_head'.
The commit also adds a run script that enables an automated unit test
of the list implementation.
ref #1225
Previously, Idle_thread inherited from Thread which caused an extra
processor_pool.h and processor_pool.cc and also made class models for
processor and scheduling more complex. However, this inheritance makes
not much sense anyway as an idle context doesn't trigger most of the code
in Thread.
ref #1225
The memory barrier prevents the compiler from changing the program order
of memory accesses in such a way that accesses to the guarded resource
get outside the guarded stage. As cmpxchg() defines the start of the
guarded stage it also represents an effective memory barrier.
On x86, the architecture ensures to not reorder writes with older reads,
writes to memory with other writes (except in cases that are not
relevant for our locks), or read/write instructions with I/O
instructions, locked instructions, and serializing instructions.
However on ARM, the architectural memory model allows not only that
memory accesses take local effect in another order as their program
order but also that different observers (components that can access
memory like data-busses, TLBs and branch predictors) observe these
effects each in another order. Thus, a correct program order isn't
sufficient for a correct observation order. An additional architectural
preservation of the memory barrier is needed to achieve this.
Fixes#692
Previously, the timer was used to remember the state of the time slices.
This was sufficient before priorities entered the scene as a thread always
received a fresh time slice when he was scheduled away. However, with
priorities this isn't always the case. A thread can be preempted by another
thread due to a higher priority. In this case the low-priority thread must
remember how much time he has consumed from its current time slice because
the timer gets re-programmed. Otherwise, if we have high-priority threads
that block and unblock with high frequency, the head of the next lower
priority would start with a fresh time slice all the time and is never
superseded.
fix#1287
Previously, we did the protection-domain switches without a transitional
translation table that contains only global mappings. This was fine as long
as the CPU did no speculative memory accesses. However, to enabling branch
prediction triggers such accesses. Thus, if we don't want to invalidate
predictors on every context switch, we need to switch more carefully.
ref #474
Martin Stein