CPU Allocator

NRI Resource Policy has a separate CPU allocator component that helps policies make educated allocation of CPU cores for workloads. Currently all policies utilize the built-in CPU allocator. See policy specific documentation for more details.

Topology Based Allocation

The CPU allocator tries to optimize the allocation of CPUs in terms of the hardware topology. More specifically, it aims at packing all CPUs of one request “near” each other in order to minimize memory latencies between CPUs.

CPU Prioritization

The CPU allocator also does automatic CPU prioritization by detecting CPU features and their configuration parameters. Currently, NRI Resource Policy supports CPU priority detection based on the intel_pstate scaling driver in the Linux CPUFreq subsystem, and, Intel Speed Select Technology (SST), or based on the detected core types on hybrid CPU architecture systems.

CPUs are divided into three priority classes, i.e. high, normal and low. Policies utilizing the CPU allocator may choose to prefer certain priority class for certain types of workloads. For example, prefer (and preserve) high priority CPUs for high priority workloads.

Intel Speed Select Technology (SST)

NRI Resource Policy supports detection of all Intel Speed Select Technology (SST) features, i.e. Speed Select Technology Performance Profile (SST-PP), Base Frequency (SST-BF), Turbo Frequency (SST-TF) and Core Power (SST-CP).

CPU prioritization is based on detection of the currently active SST features and their parameterization:

If SST-TF has been enabled, all CPUs prioritized by SST-TF are flagged as high priority.
If SST-CP is enabled but SST-TF disabled, the CPU allocator examines the active Classes of Service (CLOSes) and their parameters. CPUs associated with the highest priority CLOS will be flagged as high priority, lowest priority CLOS will be flagged as low priority and possible “middle priority” CLOS as normal priority.
If SST-BF has been enabled and SST-TF and SST-CP are inactive, all BF high priority cores (having higher guaranteed base frequency) will be flagged as high priority.

Linux CPUFreq

CPUFreq based prioritization only takes effect if Intel Speed Select Technology (SST) is disabled (or not supported). NRI-RM divides CPU cores into priority classes based on two parameters:

base frequency
EPP (Energy-Performance Preference)

CPU cores with high base frequency (relative to the other cores in the system) will be flagged as high priority. Low base frequency will map to low priority, correspondingly.

CPU cores with high EPP priority (relative to the other cores in the system) will be marked as high priority cores.

Hybrid CPU Architecture

On systems with a hybrid CPU architecture, where some cores are optimized for performance and others for power consumption, performance optimized cores are classified as high priority CPUs while energy efficient cores as low priority CPUs.