cpuidle: add haltpoll governor

The cpuidle_haltpoll governor, in conjunction with the haltpoll cpuidle
driver, allows guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
halting.
This provides the following benefits to host side polling:

        1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
           a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
           cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.

        2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.

The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
even with other runnable tasks in the host.

Results comparing halt_poll_ns and server/client application
where a small packet is ping-ponged:

host                                        --> 31.33
halt_poll_ns=300000 / no guest busy spin    --> 33.40   (93.8%)
halt_poll_ns=0 / guest_halt_poll_ns=300000  --> 32.73   (95.7%)

For the SAP HANA benchmarks (where idle_spin is a parameter
of the previous version of the patch, results should be the
same):

hpns == halt_poll_ns

                          idle_spin=0/   idle_spin=800/    idle_spin=0/
                          hpns=200000    hpns=0            hpns=800000
DeleteC06T03 (100 thread) 1.76           1.71 (-3%)        1.78   (+1%)
InsertC16T02 (100 thread) 2.14           2.07 (-3%)        2.18   (+1.8%)
DeleteC00T01 (1 thread)   1.34           1.28 (-4.5%)      1.29   (-3.7%)
UpdateC00T03 (1 thread)   4.72           4.18 (-12%)       4.53   (-5%)

Signed-off-by: Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>

1 files changed, 78 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/guest-halt-polling.txt b/Documentation/virtual/guest-halt-polling.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b3a2a294532d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/virtual/guest-halt-polling.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+Guest halt polling
+==================
+
+The cpuidle_haltpoll driver, with the haltpoll governor, allows
+the guest vcpus to poll for a specified amount of time before
+halting.
+This provides the following benefits to host side polling:
+
+	1) The POLL flag is set while polling is performed, which allows
+	   a remote vCPU to avoid sending an IPI (and the associated
+	   cost of handling the IPI) when performing a wakeup.
+
+	2) The VM-exit cost can be avoided.
+
+The downside of guest side polling is that polling is performed
+even with other runnable tasks in the host.
+
+The basic logic as follows: A global value, guest_halt_poll_ns,
+is configured by the user, indicating the maximum amount of
+time polling is allowed. This value is fixed.
+
+Each vcpu has an adjustable guest_halt_poll_ns
+("per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns"), which is adjusted by the algorithm
+in response to events (explained below).
+
+Module Parameters
+=================
+
+The haltpoll governor has 5 tunable module parameters:
+
+1) guest_halt_poll_ns:
+Maximum amount of time, in nanoseconds, that polling is
+performed before halting.
+
+Default: 200000
+
+2) guest_halt_poll_shrink:
+Division factor used to shrink per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when
+wakeup event occurs after the global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+3) guest_halt_poll_grow:
+Multiplication factor used to grow per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+when event occurs after per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns
+but before global guest_halt_poll_ns.
+
+Default: 2
+
+4) guest_halt_poll_grow_start:
+The per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns eventually reaches zero
+in case of an idle system. This value sets the initial
+per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns when growing. This can
+be increased from 10000, to avoid misses during the initial
+growth stage:
+
+10k, 20k, 40k, ... (example assumes guest_halt_poll_grow=2).
+
+Default: 50000
+
+5) guest_halt_poll_allow_shrink:
+
+Bool parameter which allows shrinking. Set to N
+to avoid it (per-cpu guest_halt_poll_ns will remain
+high once achieves global guest_halt_poll_ns value).
+
+Default: Y
+
+The module parameters can be set from the debugfs files in:
+
+	/sys/module/haltpoll/parameters/
+
+Further Notes
+=============
+
+- Care should be taken when setting the guest_halt_poll_ns parameter as a
+large value has the potential to drive the cpu usage to 100% on a machine which
+would be almost entirely idle otherwise.