[PATCH v2] eal/unix: allow creating thread with real-time priority

[Morten Brørup]

> From: Thomas Monjalon [mailto:thomas at monjalon.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, 25 October 2023 18.46
> 
> 25/10/2023 17:37, Stephen Hemminger:
> > On Wed, 25 Oct 2023 17:13:14 +0200
> > Thomas Monjalon <thomas at monjalon.net> wrote:
> >
> > >  	case RTE_THREAD_PRIORITY_REALTIME_CRITICAL:
> > > +		/*
> > > +		 * WARNING: Real-time busy loop takes priority on kernel
> threads,
> > > +		 *          making the system unstable.
> > > +		 *          There is also a known issue when using
> rte_ring.
> > > +		 */
> >
> > I was thinking something like:
> >
> > 	static bool warned;
> > 	if (!warned) {
> > 		RTE_LOG(NOTICE, EAL, "Real time priority is unstable when
> thread is polling without sleep\n");
> > 		warned = true;
> > 	}
> 
> I'm not sure about bothering users.
> They can fear something is wrong even if the developer took care of it.
> I think doc warnings for developers are more appropriate.
> I've added notes in the API.

I agree with Thomas on this.

If you want the log message, please degrade it to INFO or DEBUG level. It is only relevant when chasing problems, not for normal production - and thus NOTICE is too high.


Someone might build a kernel with options to keep non-dataplane threads off some dedicated CPU cores, so they can be used for guaranteed low-latency dataplane threads. We do. We don't use real-time priority, though.

For reference, we did some experiments (using this custom built kernel) with a dedicated thread doing nothing but a loop calling rte_rdtsc_precise() and registering the delta. Although the overwhelming majority is ca. CPU 80 cycles, there are some big outliers at ca. 9,000 CPU cycles. (Order of magnitude: ca. 45 of these big outliers per minute.) Apparently some kernel threads steal some cycles from this thread, regardless of our customizations. We haven't bothered analyzing and optimizing it further.

I think our experiment supports the need to allow kernel threads to run, e.g. by calling sleep() or similar, when an EAL thread has real-time priority.