kernel: removed GENTLE_FAIR_SLEEPERS for better Android performance
scheduler: minor improvement to pick_next_highest_task_rt

From: Michael J Wang <mjwang@broadcom.com>

Avoid extra work by continuing on to the next rt_rq if the highest prio task
in current rt_rq is the same priority as our candidate task.

Signed-off-by: Michael J Wang <mjwang@broadcom.com>
kernel:sched: LOAD_FREQ (4*HZ+61) avoids loadavg Moire

LOAD_FREQ is (5*HZ+1) to avoid high load average when idle:
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2007/10/3/328568

I suggest (4*HZ+61) for a better distribution.

With some seconds based load (like SSL heartbeats)
and LOAD_FREQ at (5*HZ+1) I see Moire patterns like inverse sawtooth,
since 2 or 3 probes hit the jobs (load increases quickly),
followed by several probes missing it.

A 4.61 sec interval gives optimal distribution over when within a
second a probe is taken, as .61 is close to golden ratio phi 1.618...
(test in http://ripke.com/goldenratio.c).

12*4.61 = 55.32 secs is still close to a minute,
and 13*4.61=59.93 is even closer than the current 12*5.01=60.12
(with exponents EXP_x adjusted to a ratio of 13 instead of 12).
iosched: prevent aliased requests from starving other I/O

Hi, Jens,

If you recall, I posted an RFC patch for this back in July of last year:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/7/13/279

The basic problem is that a process can issue a never-ending stream of
async direct I/Os to the same sector on a device, thus starving out
other I/O in the system (due to the way the alias handling works in both
cfq and deadline).  The solution I proposed back then was to start
dispatching from the fifo after a certain number of aliases had been
dispatched.  Vivek asked why we had to treat aliases differently at all,
and I never had a good answer.  So, I put together a simple patch which
allows aliases to be added to the rb tree (it adds them to the right,
though that doesn't matter as the order isn't guaranteed anyway).  I
think this is the preferred solution, as it doesn't break up time slices
in CFQ or batches in deadline.  I've tested it, and it does solve the
starvation issue.  Let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Jeff

Signed-off-by: Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com>
procfs: add num_to_str() to speed up /proc/stat

== stat_check.py
num = 0
with open("/proc/stat") as f:
        while num < 1000 :
                data = f.read()
                f.seek(0, 0)
                num = num + 1
==

perf shows

    20.39%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] format_decode
    13.41%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] number
    12.61%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] vsnprintf
    10.85%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] memcpy
     4.85%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] radix_tree_lookup
     4.43%  stat_check.py  [kernel.kallsyms]    [k] seq_printf

This patch removes most of calls to vsnprintf() by adding num_to_str()
and seq_print_decimal_ull(), which prints decimal numbers without rich
functions provided by printf().

On my 8cpu box.
== Before patch ==
[root@bluextal test]# time ./stat_check.py

real    0m0.150s
user    0m0.026s
sys     0m0.121s

== After patch ==
[root@bluextal test]# time ./stat_check.py

real    0m0.055s
user    0m0.022s
sys     0m0.030s

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: remove incorrect comment, use less statck in num_to_str(), move comment from .h to .c, simplify seq_put_decimal_ull()]
[andrea@betterlinux.com: avoid breaking the ABI in /proc/stat]
Signed-off-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrea Righi <andrea@betterlinux.com>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Cc: Glauber Costa <glommer@parallels.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Paul Turner <pjt@google.com>
Cc: Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
backported from Linux 3.4-rc4 to Linux 3.0.x by faux123
CPUfreq ondemand: update sampling rate without waiting for next sampling

When a new sampling rate is shorter than the current one, (e.g., 1 sec
--> 10 ms) regardless how short the new one is, the current ondemand
mechanism wait for the previously set timer to be expired.

For example, if the user has just expressed that the sampling rate
should be 10 ms from now and the previous was 1000 ms, the new rate may
become effective 999 ms later, which could be not acceptable for the
user if the user has intended to speed up sampling because the system is
expected to react to CPU load fluctuation quickly from __now__.

In order to address this issue, we need to cancel the previously set
timer (schedule_delayed_work) and reset the timer if resetting timer is
expected to trigger the delayed_work ealier.

Signed-off-by: MyungJoo Ham <myungjoo.ham@samsung.com>
Signed-off-by: Kyungmin Park <kyungmin.park@samsung.com>
vsprintf: optimize decimal conversion (again)

    This patch is based upon an original from Michal Nazarewicz.

    Previous code was using optimizations which were developed
    to work well even on narrow-word CPUs (by today's standards).
    But Linux runs only on 32-bit and wider CPUs. We can use that.

    First: using 32x32->64 multiply and trivial 32-bit shift,
    we can correctly divide by 10 much larger numbers, and thus
    we can print groups of 9 digits instead of groups of 5 digits.

    Next: there are two algorithms to print larger numbers.
    One is generic: divide by 1000000000 and repeatedly print
    groups of (up to) 9 digits. It's conceptually simple,
    but requires an (unsigned long long) / 1000000000 division.
    Second algorithm splits 64-bit unsigned long long into 16-bit chunks,
    manipulates them cleverly and generates groups of 4 decimal digits.
    It so happens that it does NOT require long long division.

    If long is > 32 bits, division of 64-bit values is relatively easy,
    and we will use the first algorithm.
    If long long is > 64 bits (strange architecture with VERY large long long),
    second algorithm can't be used, and we again use the first one.
    Else (if long is 32 bits and long long is 64 bits) we use second one.

    And third: there is a simple optimization which takes fast path
    not only for zero as was done before, but for all one-digit numbers.

    In all tested cases new code is faster than old one, in many cases by 30%,
    in few cases by more than 50% (for example, on x86-32, conversion of 12345678).
    Code growth is ~0 in 32-bit case and ~130 bytes in 64-bit case.

    Signed-off-by: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@mina86.com>
    Signed-off-by: Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@googlemail.com>
    Cc: Douglas W Jones <jones@cs.uiowa.edu>a
    backported from Linux 3.4+ to Linux 3.0 by faux123
timer: optimize apply_slack()

__fls(mask) is equivalent to find_last_bit(&mask, BITS_PER_LONG), but cheaper.
find_last_bit was showing up high on the list when I was profiling for stalls
on icache misses on a system with very small cache size (MIPS).

Signed-off-by: Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>