aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
authorLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
committerLibravatar Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2023-02-21 18:24:12 -0800
commit5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2 (patch)
treecc5c2d0a898769fd59549594fedb3ee6f84e59a0 /Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst
downloadlinux-5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2.tar.gz
linux-5b7c4cabbb65f5c469464da6c5f614cbd7f730f2.zip
Merge tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-nextgrafted
Pull networking updates from Jakub Kicinski: "Core: - Add dedicated kmem_cache for typical/small skb->head, avoid having to access struct page at kfree time, and improve memory use. - Introduce sysctl to set default RPS configuration for new netdevs. - Define Netlink protocol specification format which can be used to describe messages used by each family and auto-generate parsers. Add tools for generating kernel data structures and uAPI headers. - Expose all net/core sysctls inside netns. - Remove 4s sleep in netpoll if carrier is instantly detected on boot. - Add configurable limit of MDB entries per port, and port-vlan. - Continue populating drop reasons throughout the stack. - Retire a handful of legacy Qdiscs and classifiers. Protocols: - Support IPv4 big TCP (TSO frames larger than 64kB). - Add IP_LOCAL_PORT_RANGE socket option, to control local port range on socket by socket basis. - Track and report in procfs number of MPTCP sockets used. - Support mixing IPv4 and IPv6 flows in the in-kernel MPTCP path manager. - IPv6: don't check net.ipv6.route.max_size and rely on garbage collection to free memory (similarly to IPv4). - Support Penultimate Segment Pop (PSP) flavor in SRv6 (RFC8986). - ICMP: add per-rate limit counters. - Add support for user scanning requests in ieee802154. - Remove static WEP support. - Support minimal Wi-Fi 7 Extremely High Throughput (EHT) rate reporting. - WiFi 7 EHT channel puncturing support (client & AP). BPF: - Add a rbtree data structure following the "next-gen data structure" precedent set by recently added linked list, that is, by using kfunc + kptr instead of adding a new BPF map type. - Expose XDP hints via kfuncs with initial support for RX hash and timestamp metadata. - Add BPF_F_NO_TUNNEL_KEY extension to bpf_skb_set_tunnel_key to better support decap on GRE tunnel devices not operating in collect metadata. - Improve x86 JIT's codegen for PROBE_MEM runtime error checks. - Remove the need for trace_printk_lock for bpf_trace_printk and bpf_trace_vprintk helpers. - Extend libbpf's bpf_tracing.h support for tracing arguments of kprobes/uprobes and syscall as a special case. - Significantly reduce the search time for module symbols by livepatch and BPF. - Enable cpumasks to be used as kptrs, which is useful for tracing programs tracking which tasks end up running on which CPUs in different time intervals. - Add support for BPF trampoline on s390x and riscv64. - Add capability to export the XDP features supported by the NIC. - Add __bpf_kfunc tag for marking kernel functions as kfuncs. - Add cgroup.memory=nobpf kernel parameter option to disable BPF memory accounting for container environments. Netfilter: - Remove the CLUSTERIP target. It has been marked as obsolete for years, and we still have WARN splats wrt races of the out-of-band /proc interface installed by this target. - Add 'destroy' commands to nf_tables. They are identical to the existing 'delete' commands, but do not return an error if the referenced object (set, chain, rule...) did not exist. Driver API: - Improve cpumask_local_spread() locality to help NICs set the right IRQ affinity on AMD platforms. - Separate C22 and C45 MDIO bus transactions more clearly. - Introduce new DCB table to control DSCP rewrite on egress. - Support configuration of Physical Layer Collision Avoidance (PLCA) Reconciliation Sublayer (RS) (802.3cg-2019). Modern version of shared medium Ethernet. - Support for MAC Merge layer (IEEE 802.3-2018 clause 99). Allowing preemption of low priority frames by high priority frames. - Add support for controlling MACSec offload using netlink SET. - Rework devlink instance refcounts to allow registration and de-registration under the instance lock. Split the code into multiple files, drop some of the unnecessarily granular locks and factor out common parts of netlink operation handling. - Add TX frame aggregation parameters (for USB drivers). - Add a new attr TCA_EXT_WARN_MSG to report TC (offload) warning messages with notifications for debug. - Allow offloading of UDP NEW connections via act_ct. - Add support for per action HW stats in TC. - Support hardware miss to TC action (continue processing in SW from a specific point in the action chain). - Warn if old Wireless Extension user space interface is used with modern cfg80211/mac80211 drivers. Do not support Wireless Extensions for Wi-Fi 7 devices at all. Everyone should switch to using nl80211 interface instead. - Improve the CAN bit timing configuration. Use extack to return error messages directly to user space, update the SJW handling, including the definition of a new default value that will benefit CAN-FD controllers, by increasing their oscillator tolerance. New hardware / drivers: - Ethernet: - nVidia BlueField-3 support (control traffic driver) - Ethernet support for imx93 SoCs - Motorcomm yt8531 gigabit Ethernet PHY - onsemi NCN26000 10BASE-T1S PHY (with support for PLCA) - Microchip LAN8841 PHY (incl. cable diagnostics and PTP) - Amlogic gxl MDIO mux - WiFi: - RealTek RTL8188EU (rtl8xxxu) - Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 devices (ath12k) - CAN: - Renesas R-Car V4H Drivers: - Bluetooth: - Set Per Platform Antenna Gain (PPAG) for Intel controllers. - Ethernet NICs: - Intel (1G, igc): - support TSN / Qbv / packet scheduling features of i226 model - Intel (100G, ice): - use GNSS subsystem instead of TTY - multi-buffer XDP support - extend support for GPIO pins to E823 devices - nVidia/Mellanox: - update the shared buffer configuration on PFC commands - implement PTP adjphase function for HW offset control - TC support for Geneve and GRE with VF tunnel offload - more efficient crypto key management method - multi-port eswitch support - Netronome/Corigine: - add DCB IEEE support - support IPsec offloading for NFP3800 - Freescale/NXP (enetc): - support XDP_REDIRECT for XDP non-linear buffers - improve reconfig, avoid link flap and waiting for idle - support MAC Merge layer - Other NICs: - sfc/ef100: add basic devlink support for ef100 - ionic: rx_push mode operation (writing descriptors via MMIO) - bnxt: use the auxiliary bus abstraction for RDMA - r8169: disable ASPM and reset bus in case of tx timeout - cpsw: support QSGMII mode for J721e CPSW9G - cpts: support pulse-per-second output - ngbe: add an mdio bus driver - usbnet: optimize usbnet_bh() by avoiding unnecessary queuing - r8152: handle devices with FW with NCM support - amd-xgbe: support 10Mbps, 2.5GbE speeds and rx-adaptation - virtio-net: support multi buffer XDP - virtio/vsock: replace virtio_vsock_pkt with sk_buff - tsnep: XDP support - Ethernet high-speed switches: - nVidia/Mellanox (mlxsw): - add support for latency TLV (in FW control messages) - Microchip (sparx5): - separate explicit and implicit traffic forwarding rules, make the implicit rules always active - add support for egress DSCP rewrite - IS0 VCAP support (Ingress Classification) - IS2 VCAP filters (protos, L3 addrs, L4 ports, flags, ToS etc.) - ES2 VCAP support (Egress Access Control) - support for Per-Stream Filtering and Policing (802.1Q, 8.6.5.1) - Ethernet embedded switches: - Marvell (mv88e6xxx): - add MAB (port auth) offload support - enable PTP receive for mv88e6390 - NXP (ocelot): - support MAC Merge layer - support for the the vsc7512 internal copper phys - Microchip: - lan9303: convert to PHYLINK - lan966x: support TC flower filter statistics - lan937x: PTP support for KSZ9563/KSZ8563 and LAN937x - lan937x: support Credit Based Shaper configuration - ksz9477: support Energy Efficient Ethernet - other: - qca8k: convert to regmap read/write API, use bulk operations - rswitch: Improve TX timestamp accuracy - Intel WiFi (iwlwifi): - EHT (Wi-Fi 7) rate reporting - STEP equalizer support: transfer some STEP (connection to radio on platforms with integrated wifi) related parameters from the BIOS to the firmware. - Qualcomm 802.11ax WiFi (ath11k): - IPQ5018 support - Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) responder role support - channel 177 support - MediaTek WiFi (mt76): - per-PHY LED support - mt7996: EHT (Wi-Fi 7) support - Wireless Ethernet Dispatch (WED) reset support - switch to using page pool allocator - RealTek WiFi (rtw89): - support new version of Bluetooth co-existance - Mobile: - rmnet: support TX aggregation" * tag 'net-next-6.3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next: (1872 commits) page_pool: add a comment explaining the fragment counter usage net: ethtool: fix __ethtool_dev_mm_supported() implementation ethtool: pse-pd: Fix double word in comments xsk: add linux/vmalloc.h to xsk.c sefltests: netdevsim: wait for devlink instance after netns removal selftest: fib_tests: Always cleanup before exit net/mlx5e: Align IPsec ASO result memory to be as required by hardware net/mlx5e: TC, Set CT miss to the specific ct action instance net/mlx5e: Rename CHAIN_TO_REG to MAPPED_OBJ_TO_REG net/mlx5: Refactor tc miss handling to a single function net/mlx5: Kconfig: Make tc offload depend on tc skb extension net/sched: flower: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: flower: Move filter handle initialization earlier net/sched: cls_api: Support hardware miss to tc action net/sched: Rename user cookie and act cookie sfc: fix builds without CONFIG_RTC_LIB sfc: clean up some inconsistent indentings net/mlx4_en: Introduce flexible array to silence overflow warning net: lan966x: Fix possible deadlock inside PTP net/ulp: Remove redundant ->clone() test in inet_clone_ulp(). ...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst427
1 files changed, 427 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..8fbce5e76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-energy.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,427 @@
+=======================
+Energy Aware Scheduling
+=======================
+
+1. Introduction
+---------------
+
+Energy Aware Scheduling (or EAS) gives the scheduler the ability to predict
+the impact of its decisions on the energy consumed by CPUs. EAS relies on an
+Energy Model (EM) of the CPUs to select an energy efficient CPU for each task,
+with a minimal impact on throughput. This document aims at providing an
+introduction on how EAS works, what are the main design decisions behind it, and
+details what is needed to get it to run.
+
+Before going any further, please note that at the time of writing::
+
+ /!\ EAS does not support platforms with symmetric CPU topologies /!\
+
+EAS operates only on heterogeneous CPU topologies (such as Arm big.LITTLE)
+because this is where the potential for saving energy through scheduling is
+the highest.
+
+The actual EM used by EAS is _not_ maintained by the scheduler, but by a
+dedicated framework. For details about this framework and what it provides,
+please refer to its documentation (see Documentation/power/energy-model.rst).
+
+
+2. Background and Terminology
+-----------------------------
+
+To make it clear from the start:
+ - energy = [joule] (resource like a battery on powered devices)
+ - power = energy/time = [joule/second] = [watt]
+
+The goal of EAS is to minimize energy, while still getting the job done. That
+is, we want to maximize::
+
+ performance [inst/s]
+ --------------------
+ power [W]
+
+which is equivalent to minimizing::
+
+ energy [J]
+ -----------
+ instruction
+
+while still getting 'good' performance. It is essentially an alternative
+optimization objective to the current performance-only objective for the
+scheduler. This alternative considers two objectives: energy-efficiency and
+performance.
+
+The idea behind introducing an EM is to allow the scheduler to evaluate the
+implications of its decisions rather than blindly applying energy-saving
+techniques that may have positive effects only on some platforms. At the same
+time, the EM must be as simple as possible to minimize the scheduler latency
+impact.
+
+In short, EAS changes the way CFS tasks are assigned to CPUs. When it is time
+for the scheduler to decide where a task should run (during wake-up), the EM
+is used to break the tie between several good CPU candidates and pick the one
+that is predicted to yield the best energy consumption without harming the
+system's throughput. The predictions made by EAS rely on specific elements of
+knowledge about the platform's topology, which include the 'capacity' of CPUs,
+and their respective energy costs.
+
+
+3. Topology information
+-----------------------
+
+EAS (as well as the rest of the scheduler) uses the notion of 'capacity' to
+differentiate CPUs with different computing throughput. The 'capacity' of a CPU
+represents the amount of work it can absorb when running at its highest
+frequency compared to the most capable CPU of the system. Capacity values are
+normalized in a 1024 range, and are comparable with the utilization signals of
+tasks and CPUs computed by the Per-Entity Load Tracking (PELT) mechanism. Thanks
+to capacity and utilization values, EAS is able to estimate how big/busy a
+task/CPU is, and to take this into consideration when evaluating performance vs
+energy trade-offs. The capacity of CPUs is provided via arch-specific code
+through the arch_scale_cpu_capacity() callback.
+
+The rest of platform knowledge used by EAS is directly read from the Energy
+Model (EM) framework. The EM of a platform is composed of a power cost table
+per 'performance domain' in the system (see Documentation/power/energy-model.rst
+for futher details about performance domains).
+
+The scheduler manages references to the EM objects in the topology code when the
+scheduling domains are built, or re-built. For each root domain (rd), the
+scheduler maintains a singly linked list of all performance domains intersecting
+the current rd->span. Each node in the list contains a pointer to a struct
+em_perf_domain as provided by the EM framework.
+
+The lists are attached to the root domains in order to cope with exclusive
+cpuset configurations. Since the boundaries of exclusive cpusets do not
+necessarily match those of performance domains, the lists of different root
+domains can contain duplicate elements.
+
+Example 1.
+ Let us consider a platform with 12 CPUs, split in 3 performance domains
+ (pd0, pd4 and pd8), organized as follows::
+
+ CPUs: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
+ PDs: |--pd0--|--pd4--|---pd8---|
+ RDs: |----rd1----|-----rd2-----|
+
+ Now, consider that userspace decided to split the system with two
+ exclusive cpusets, hence creating two independent root domains, each
+ containing 6 CPUs. The two root domains are denoted rd1 and rd2 in the
+ above figure. Since pd4 intersects with both rd1 and rd2, it will be
+ present in the linked list '->pd' attached to each of them:
+
+ * rd1->pd: pd0 -> pd4
+ * rd2->pd: pd4 -> pd8
+
+ Please note that the scheduler will create two duplicate list nodes for
+ pd4 (one for each list). However, both just hold a pointer to the same
+ shared data structure of the EM framework.
+
+Since the access to these lists can happen concurrently with hotplug and other
+things, they are protected by RCU, like the rest of topology structures
+manipulated by the scheduler.
+
+EAS also maintains a static key (sched_energy_present) which is enabled when at
+least one root domain meets all conditions for EAS to start. Those conditions
+are summarized in Section 6.
+
+
+4. Energy-Aware task placement
+------------------------------
+
+EAS overrides the CFS task wake-up balancing code. It uses the EM of the
+platform and the PELT signals to choose an energy-efficient target CPU during
+wake-up balance. When EAS is enabled, select_task_rq_fair() calls
+find_energy_efficient_cpu() to do the placement decision. This function looks
+for the CPU with the highest spare capacity (CPU capacity - CPU utilization) in
+each performance domain since it is the one which will allow us to keep the
+frequency the lowest. Then, the function checks if placing the task there could
+save energy compared to leaving it on prev_cpu, i.e. the CPU where the task ran
+in its previous activation.
+
+find_energy_efficient_cpu() uses compute_energy() to estimate what will be the
+energy consumed by the system if the waking task was migrated. compute_energy()
+looks at the current utilization landscape of the CPUs and adjusts it to
+'simulate' the task migration. The EM framework provides the em_pd_energy() API
+which computes the expected energy consumption of each performance domain for
+the given utilization landscape.
+
+An example of energy-optimized task placement decision is detailed below.
+
+Example 2.
+ Let us consider a (fake) platform with 2 independent performance domains
+ composed of two CPUs each. CPU0 and CPU1 are little CPUs; CPU2 and CPU3
+ are big.
+
+ The scheduler must decide where to place a task P whose util_avg = 200
+ and prev_cpu = 0.
+
+ The current utilization landscape of the CPUs is depicted on the graph
+ below. CPUs 0-3 have a util_avg of 400, 100, 600 and 500 respectively
+ Each performance domain has three Operating Performance Points (OPPs).
+ The CPU capacity and power cost associated with each OPP is listed in
+ the Energy Model table. The util_avg of P is shown on the figures
+ below as 'PP'::
+
+ CPU util.
+ 1024 - - - - - - - Energy Model
+ +-----------+-------------+
+ | Little | Big |
+ 768 ============= +-----+-----+------+------+
+ | Cap | Pwr | Cap | Pwr |
+ +-----+-----+------+------+
+ 512 =========== - ##- - - - - | 170 | 50 | 512 | 400 |
+ ## ## | 341 | 150 | 768 | 800 |
+ 341 -PP - - - - ## ## | 512 | 300 | 1024 | 1700 |
+ PP ## ## +-----+-----+------+------+
+ 170 -## - - - - ## ##
+ ## ## ## ##
+ ------------ -------------
+ CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
+
+ Current OPP: ===== Other OPP: - - - util_avg (100 each): ##
+
+
+ find_energy_efficient_cpu() will first look for the CPUs with the
+ maximum spare capacity in the two performance domains. In this example,
+ CPU1 and CPU3. Then it will estimate the energy of the system if P was
+ placed on either of them, and check if that would save some energy
+ compared to leaving P on CPU0. EAS assumes that OPPs follow utilization
+ (which is coherent with the behaviour of the schedutil CPUFreq
+ governor, see Section 6. for more details on this topic).
+
+ **Case 1. P is migrated to CPU1**::
+
+ 1024 - - - - - - -
+
+ Energy calculation:
+ 768 ============= * CPU0: 200 / 341 * 150 = 88
+ * CPU1: 300 / 341 * 150 = 131
+ * CPU2: 600 / 768 * 800 = 625
+ 512 - - - - - - - ##- - - - - * CPU3: 500 / 768 * 800 = 520
+ ## ## => total_energy = 1364
+ 341 =========== ## ##
+ PP ## ##
+ 170 -## - - PP- ## ##
+ ## ## ## ##
+ ------------ -------------
+ CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
+
+
+ **Case 2. P is migrated to CPU3**::
+
+ 1024 - - - - - - -
+
+ Energy calculation:
+ 768 ============= * CPU0: 200 / 341 * 150 = 88
+ * CPU1: 100 / 341 * 150 = 43
+ PP * CPU2: 600 / 768 * 800 = 625
+ 512 - - - - - - - ##- - -PP - * CPU3: 700 / 768 * 800 = 729
+ ## ## => total_energy = 1485
+ 341 =========== ## ##
+ ## ##
+ 170 -## - - - - ## ##
+ ## ## ## ##
+ ------------ -------------
+ CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
+
+
+ **Case 3. P stays on prev_cpu / CPU 0**::
+
+ 1024 - - - - - - -
+
+ Energy calculation:
+ 768 ============= * CPU0: 400 / 512 * 300 = 234
+ * CPU1: 100 / 512 * 300 = 58
+ * CPU2: 600 / 768 * 800 = 625
+ 512 =========== - ##- - - - - * CPU3: 500 / 768 * 800 = 520
+ ## ## => total_energy = 1437
+ 341 -PP - - - - ## ##
+ PP ## ##
+ 170 -## - - - - ## ##
+ ## ## ## ##
+ ------------ -------------
+ CPU0 CPU1 CPU2 CPU3
+
+
+ From these calculations, the Case 1 has the lowest total energy. So CPU 1
+ is be the best candidate from an energy-efficiency standpoint.
+
+Big CPUs are generally more power hungry than the little ones and are thus used
+mainly when a task doesn't fit the littles. However, little CPUs aren't always
+necessarily more energy-efficient than big CPUs. For some systems, the high OPPs
+of the little CPUs can be less energy-efficient than the lowest OPPs of the
+bigs, for example. So, if the little CPUs happen to have enough utilization at
+a specific point in time, a small task waking up at that moment could be better
+of executing on the big side in order to save energy, even though it would fit
+on the little side.
+
+And even in the case where all OPPs of the big CPUs are less energy-efficient
+than those of the little, using the big CPUs for a small task might still, under
+specific conditions, save energy. Indeed, placing a task on a little CPU can
+result in raising the OPP of the entire performance domain, and that will
+increase the cost of the tasks already running there. If the waking task is
+placed on a big CPU, its own execution cost might be higher than if it was
+running on a little, but it won't impact the other tasks of the little CPUs
+which will keep running at a lower OPP. So, when considering the total energy
+consumed by CPUs, the extra cost of running that one task on a big core can be
+smaller than the cost of raising the OPP on the little CPUs for all the other
+tasks.
+
+The examples above would be nearly impossible to get right in a generic way, and
+for all platforms, without knowing the cost of running at different OPPs on all
+CPUs of the system. Thanks to its EM-based design, EAS should cope with them
+correctly without too many troubles. However, in order to ensure a minimal
+impact on throughput for high-utilization scenarios, EAS also implements another
+mechanism called 'over-utilization'.
+
+
+5. Over-utilization
+-------------------
+
+From a general standpoint, the use-cases where EAS can help the most are those
+involving a light/medium CPU utilization. Whenever long CPU-bound tasks are
+being run, they will require all of the available CPU capacity, and there isn't
+much that can be done by the scheduler to save energy without severly harming
+throughput. In order to avoid hurting performance with EAS, CPUs are flagged as
+'over-utilized' as soon as they are used at more than 80% of their compute
+capacity. As long as no CPUs are over-utilized in a root domain, load balancing
+is disabled and EAS overridess the wake-up balancing code. EAS is likely to load
+the most energy efficient CPUs of the system more than the others if that can be
+done without harming throughput. So, the load-balancer is disabled to prevent
+it from breaking the energy-efficient task placement found by EAS. It is safe to
+do so when the system isn't overutilized since being below the 80% tipping point
+implies that:
+
+ a. there is some idle time on all CPUs, so the utilization signals used by
+ EAS are likely to accurately represent the 'size' of the various tasks
+ in the system;
+ b. all tasks should already be provided with enough CPU capacity,
+ regardless of their nice values;
+ c. since there is spare capacity all tasks must be blocking/sleeping
+ regularly and balancing at wake-up is sufficient.
+
+As soon as one CPU goes above the 80% tipping point, at least one of the three
+assumptions above becomes incorrect. In this scenario, the 'overutilized' flag
+is raised for the entire root domain, EAS is disabled, and the load-balancer is
+re-enabled. By doing so, the scheduler falls back onto load-based algorithms for
+wake-up and load balance under CPU-bound conditions. This provides a better
+respect of the nice values of tasks.
+
+Since the notion of overutilization largely relies on detecting whether or not
+there is some idle time in the system, the CPU capacity 'stolen' by higher
+(than CFS) scheduling classes (as well as IRQ) must be taken into account. As
+such, the detection of overutilization accounts for the capacity used not only
+by CFS tasks, but also by the other scheduling classes and IRQ.
+
+
+6. Dependencies and requirements for EAS
+----------------------------------------
+
+Energy Aware Scheduling depends on the CPUs of the system having specific
+hardware properties and on other features of the kernel being enabled. This
+section lists these dependencies and provides hints as to how they can be met.
+
+
+6.1 - Asymmetric CPU topology
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+
+As mentioned in the introduction, EAS is only supported on platforms with
+asymmetric CPU topologies for now. This requirement is checked at run-time by
+looking for the presence of the SD_ASYM_CPUCAPACITY_FULL flag when the scheduling
+domains are built.
+
+See Documentation/scheduler/sched-capacity.rst for requirements to be met for this
+flag to be set in the sched_domain hierarchy.
+
+Please note that EAS is not fundamentally incompatible with SMP, but no
+significant savings on SMP platforms have been observed yet. This restriction
+could be amended in the future if proven otherwise.
+
+
+6.2 - Energy Model presence
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+EAS uses the EM of a platform to estimate the impact of scheduling decisions on
+energy. So, your platform must provide power cost tables to the EM framework in
+order to make EAS start. To do so, please refer to documentation of the
+independent EM framework in Documentation/power/energy-model.rst.
+
+Please also note that the scheduling domains need to be re-built after the
+EM has been registered in order to start EAS.
+
+EAS uses the EM to make a forecasting decision on energy usage and thus it is
+more focused on the difference when checking possible options for task
+placement. For EAS it doesn't matter whether the EM power values are expressed
+in milli-Watts or in an 'abstract scale'.
+
+
+6.3 - Energy Model complexity
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The task wake-up path is very latency-sensitive. When the EM of a platform is
+too complex (too many CPUs, too many performance domains, too many performance
+states, ...), the cost of using it in the wake-up path can become prohibitive.
+The energy-aware wake-up algorithm has a complexity of:
+
+ C = Nd * (Nc + Ns)
+
+with: Nd the number of performance domains; Nc the number of CPUs; and Ns the
+total number of OPPs (ex: for two perf. domains with 4 OPPs each, Ns = 8).
+
+A complexity check is performed at the root domain level, when scheduling
+domains are built. EAS will not start on a root domain if its C happens to be
+higher than the completely arbitrary EM_MAX_COMPLEXITY threshold (2048 at the
+time of writing).
+
+If you really want to use EAS but the complexity of your platform's Energy
+Model is too high to be used with a single root domain, you're left with only
+two possible options:
+
+ 1. split your system into separate, smaller, root domains using exclusive
+ cpusets and enable EAS locally on each of them. This option has the
+ benefit to work out of the box but the drawback of preventing load
+ balance between root domains, which can result in an unbalanced system
+ overall;
+ 2. submit patches to reduce the complexity of the EAS wake-up algorithm,
+ hence enabling it to cope with larger EMs in reasonable time.
+
+
+6.4 - Schedutil governor
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+EAS tries to predict at which OPP will the CPUs be running in the close future
+in order to estimate their energy consumption. To do so, it is assumed that OPPs
+of CPUs follow their utilization.
+
+Although it is very difficult to provide hard guarantees regarding the accuracy
+of this assumption in practice (because the hardware might not do what it is
+told to do, for example), schedutil as opposed to other CPUFreq governors at
+least _requests_ frequencies calculated using the utilization signals.
+Consequently, the only sane governor to use together with EAS is schedutil,
+because it is the only one providing some degree of consistency between
+frequency requests and energy predictions.
+
+Using EAS with any other governor than schedutil is not supported.
+
+
+6.5 Scale-invariant utilization signals
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+In order to make accurate prediction across CPUs and for all performance
+states, EAS needs frequency-invariant and CPU-invariant PELT signals. These can
+be obtained using the architecture-defined arch_scale{cpu,freq}_capacity()
+callbacks.
+
+Using EAS on a platform that doesn't implement these two callbacks is not
+supported.
+
+
+6.6 Multithreading (SMT)
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+EAS in its current form is SMT unaware and is not able to leverage
+multithreaded hardware to save energy. EAS considers threads as independent
+CPUs, which can actually be counter-productive for both performance and energy.
+
+EAS on SMT is not supported.