Commit bf5835bcdb ("intel_idle: Disable IBRS during long idle")
disables IBRS when the cstate is 6 or lower. However, there are
some use cases where a customer may want to use max_cstate=1 to
lower latency. Such use cases will suffer from the performance
degradation caused by the enabling of IBRS in the sibling idle thread.
Add a "ibrs_off" module parameter to force disable IBRS and the
CPUIDLE_FLAG_IRQ_ENABLE flag if set.
In the case of a Skylake server with max_cstate=1, this new ibrs_off
option will likely increase the IRQ response latency as IRQ will now
be disabled.
When running SPECjbb2015 with cstates set to C1 on a Skylake system.
First test when the kernel is booted with: "intel_idle.ibrs_off":
max-jOPS = 117828, critical-jOPS = 66047
Then retest when the kernel is booted without the "intel_idle.ibrs_off"
added:
max-jOPS = 116408, critical-jOPS = 58958
That means booting with "intel_idle.ibrs_off" improves performance by:
max-jOPS: +1.2%, which could be considered noise range.
critical-jOPS: +12%, which is definitely a solid improvement.
The admin-guide/pm/intel_idle.rst file is updated to add a description
about the new "ibrs_off" module parameter.
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230727184600.26768-5-longman@redhat.com
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