[Intel-gfx] [PATCH] drm/i915/gt: Schedule request retirement when submission idles

[Tvrtko Ursulin]

On 18/11/2019 14:46, Chris Wilson wrote:
> The major drawback of commit 7e34f4e4aad3 ("drm/i915/gen8+: Add RC6 CTX
> corruption WA") is that it disables RC6 while Skylake (and friends) is
> active, and we do not consider the GPU idle until all outstanding
> requests have been retired and the engine switched over to the kernel
> context. If userspace is idle, this task falls onto our background idle
> worker, which only runs roughly once a second, meaning that userspace has
> to have been idle for a couple of seconds before we enable RC6 again.
> Naturally, this causes us to consume considerably more energy than
> before as powersaving is effectively disabled while a display server
> (here's looking at you Xorg) is running.
> 
> As execlists will get a completion event as the last context is
> completed and the GPU goes idle, we can use our submission tasklet to
> notice when the GPU is idle and kick the retire worker. Thus during
> light workloads, we will do much more work to idle the GPU faster...
> Hopefully with commensurate power saving!
> 
> References: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=112315
> References: 7e34f4e4aad3 ("drm/i915/gen8+: Add RC6 CTX corruption WA")
> Signed-off-by: Chris Wilson <chris at chris-wilson.co.uk>
> Cc: Tvrtko Ursulin <tvrtko.ursulin at intel.com>
> ---
>   drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_gt_requests.h |  9 ++++++++-
>   drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_lrc.c         | 11 +++++++++++
>   2 files changed, 19 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_gt_requests.h b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_gt_requests.h
> index fde546424c63..94b8758a45d9 100644
> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_gt_requests.h
> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_gt_requests.h
> @@ -7,7 +7,9 @@
>   #ifndef INTEL_GT_REQUESTS_H
>   #define INTEL_GT_REQUESTS_H
>   
> -struct intel_gt;
> +#include <linux/workqueue.h>
> +
> +#include "intel_gt_types.h"
>   
>   long intel_gt_retire_requests_timeout(struct intel_gt *gt, long timeout);
>   static inline void intel_gt_retire_requests(struct intel_gt *gt)
> @@ -15,6 +17,11 @@ static inline void intel_gt_retire_requests(struct intel_gt *gt)
>   	intel_gt_retire_requests_timeout(gt, 0);
>   }
>   
> +static inline void intel_gt_schedule_retire_requests(struct intel_gt *gt)
> +{
> +	mod_delayed_work(system_wq, &gt->requests.retire_work, 0);
> +}
> +
>   int intel_gt_wait_for_idle(struct intel_gt *gt, long timeout);
>   
>   void intel_gt_init_requests(struct intel_gt *gt);
> diff --git a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_lrc.c b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_lrc.c
> index 33ce258d484f..4485fe3e5066 100644
> --- a/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_lrc.c
> +++ b/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/gt/intel_lrc.c
> @@ -142,6 +142,7 @@
>   #include "intel_engine_pm.h"
>   #include "intel_gt.h"
>   #include "intel_gt_pm.h"
> +#include "intel_gt_requests.h"
>   #include "intel_lrc_reg.h"
>   #include "intel_mocs.h"
>   #include "intel_reset.h"
> @@ -2278,6 +2279,16 @@ static void execlists_submission_tasklet(unsigned long data)
>   		if (timeout && preempt_timeout(engine))
>   			preempt_reset(engine);
>   	}
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * If the GPU is currently idle, retire the outstanding completed
> +	 * requests. This will allow us to enter soft-rc6 as soon as possible,
> +	 * albeit at the cost of running the retire worker much more frequently
> +	 * (over the entire GT not just this engine) and emitting more idle
> +	 * barriers (i.e. kernel context switches) which may some extra 

May add, or something like that.

latency.
> +	 */
> +	if (!execlists_active(&engine->execlists))
> +		intel_gt_schedule_retire_requests(engine->gt);

Looking at "drm/i915/gen8+: Add RC6 CTX corruption WA" it seems it 
should be possible to only do this if tha RC6 WA is active. So why not 
limit the impact?

Regards,

Tvrtko

>   }
>   
>   static void __execlists_kick(struct intel_engine_execlists *execlists)
>