[Lpc-announce] Performance and Scalability Systems Microconference Accepted into 2018 Linux Plumbers Conference

[Jake Edge]

Core counts keep rising, and that means that the Linux kernel continues
to encounter interesting performance and scalability issues. Which is
not a bad thing, since it has been fifteen years since the "free lunch"
of exponential CPU-clock frequency increases came to an abrupt end.
During that time, the number of hardware threads per socket has risen
sharply, approaching 100 for some high-end implementations. In
addition, there is much more to scaling than simply larger numbers of
CPUs.

Proposed topics for this microconference include optimizations for
mmap_sem range locking [1]; clearly defining what mmap_sem protects
[2]; scalability of page allocation, zone->lock [3], and lru_lock; swap
scalability; variable hotpatching (self-modifying code!);
multithreading kernel work; improved workqueue interaction with CPU
hotplug events; proper (and optimized) cgroup accounting [4] for
workqueue threads; and automatically scaling the threshold values for
per-CPU counters.

We are also accepting additional topics. In particular, we are curious
to hear about real-world bottlenecks that people are running into, as
well as scalability work-in-progress that needs face-to-face discussion.

We hope to see you there!

LPC [5] will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from
Tuesday, November 13 through Thursday, November 15.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/724502/
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/753058/
[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/753269/
[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/753162/
[5] https://linuxplumbersconf.org/