linux-imx

timers: Fix excessive granularity of new timers after a nohz idle

When a timer base is idle, it is forwarded when a new timer is added
to ensure that granularity does not become excessive. When not idle,
the timer tick is expected to increment the base.

However there are several problems:

- If an existing timer is modified, the base is forwarded only after
  the index is calculated.

- The base is not forwarded by add_timer_on.

- There is a window after a timer is restarted from a nohz idle, after
  it is marked not-idle and before the timer tick on this CPU, where a
  timer may be added but the ancient base does not get forwarded.

These result in excessive granularity (a 1 jiffy timeout can blow out
to 100s of jiffies), which cause the rcu lockup detector to trigger,
among other things.

Fix this by keeping track of whether the timer base has been idle
since it was last run or forwarded, and if so then forward it before
adding a new timer.

There is still a case where mod_timer optimises the case of a pending
timer mod with the same expiry time, where the timer can see excessive
granularity relative to the new, shorter interval. A comment is added,
but it's not changed because it is an important fastpath for
networking.

This has been tested and found to fix the RCU softlockup messages.

Testing was also done with tracing to measure requested versus
achieved wakeup latencies for all non-deferrable timers in an idle
system (with no lockup watchdogs running). Wakeup latency relative to
absolute latency is calculated (note this suffers from round-up skew
at low absolute times) and analysed:

             max     avg      std
upstream   506.0    1.20     4.68
patched      2.0    1.08     0.15

The bug was noticed due to the lockup detector Kconfig changes
dropping it out of people's .configs and resulting in larger base
clk skew When the lockup detectors are enabled, no CPU can go idle for
longer than 4 seconds, which limits the granularity errors.
Sub-optimal timer behaviour is observable on a smaller scale in that
case:

	     max     avg      std
upstream     9.0    1.05     0.19
patched      2.0    1.04     0.11

Fixes: Fixes: a683f390b93f ("timers: Forward the wheel clock whenever possible")
Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Tested-by: Jonathan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com>
Tested-by: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: dzickus@redhat.com
Cc: sfr@canb.auug.org.au
Cc: mpe@ellerman.id.au
Cc: Stephen Boyd <sboyd@codeaurora.org>
Cc: linuxarm@huawei.com
Cc: abdhalee@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Cc: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org
Cc: paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Cc: torvalds@linux-foundation.org
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20170822084348.21436-1-npiggin@gmail.com