]> git.ipfire.org Git - thirdparty/linux.git/commit
selftests/resctrl: Improve accuracy of cache occupancy test
authorReinette Chatre <reinette.chatre@intel.com>
Sat, 4 Apr 2026 01:56:00 +0000 (18:56 -0700)
committerShuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Tue, 5 May 2026 00:40:02 +0000 (18:40 -0600)
commit7a214b4ec1c967533439b4ef16941cabb52a88a8
tree8d4b3644cff5160551ff09866477533833363a17
parentbb86954a672ee71f2075c4ef79e51f95391d11dd
selftests/resctrl: Improve accuracy of cache occupancy test

Dave Martin reported inconsistent CMT test failures. In one experiment
the first run of the CMT test failed because of too large (24%) difference
between measured and achievable cache occupancy while the second run passed
with an acceptable 4% difference.

The CMT test is susceptible to interference from the rest of the system.
This can be demonstrated with a utility like stress-ng by running the CMT
test while introducing cache misses using:

   stress-ng --matrix-3d 0 --matrix-3d-zyx

Below shows an example of the CMT test failing because of a significant
difference between measured and achievable cache occupancy when run with
interference:
    # Starting CMT test ...
    # Mounting resctrl to "/sys/fs/resctrl"
    # Cache size :335544320
    # Writing benchmark parameters to resctrl FS
    # Benchmark PID: 7011
    # Checking for pass/fail
    # Fail: Check cache miss rate within 15%
    # Percent diff=99
    # Number of bits: 5
    # Average LLC val: 235929
    # Cache span (bytes): 83886080
    not ok 1 CMT: test

The CMT test creates a new control group that is also capable of monitoring
and assigns the workload to it. The workload allocates a buffer that by
default fills a portion of the L3 and keeps reading from the buffer,
measuring the L3 occupancy at intervals. The test passes if the workload's
L3 occupancy is within 15% of the buffer size.

By not adjusting any capacity bitmasks the workload shares the cache with
the rest of the system. Any other task that may be running could evict
the workload's data from the cache causing it to have low cache occupancy.

Reduce interference from the rest of the system by ensuring that the
workload's control group uses the capacity bitmask found in the user
parameters for L3 and that the rest of the system can only allocate into
the inverse of the workload's L3 cache portion. Other tasks can thus no
longer evict the workload's data from L3.

With the above adjustments the CMT test is more consistent. Repeating the
CMT test while generating interference with stress-ng on a sample
system after applying the fixes show significant improvement in test
accuracy:

    # Starting CMT test ...
    # Mounting resctrl to "/sys/fs/resctrl"
    # Cache size :335544320
    # Writing benchmark parameters to resctrl FS
    # Write schema "L3:0=fffe0" to resctrl FS
    # Write schema "L3:0=1f" to resctrl FS
    # Benchmark PID: 7089
    # Checking for pass/fail
    # Pass: Check cache miss rate within 15%
    # Percent diff=12
    # Number of bits: 5
    # Average LLC val: 73269248
    # Cache span (bytes): 83886080
    ok 1 CMT: test

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/b160592179f88069cdc679563e152007998a0d76.1775266384.git.reinette.chatre@intel.com
Reported-by: Dave Martin <Dave.Martin@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Reinette Chatre <reinette.chatre@intel.com>
Tested-by: Chen Yu <yu.c.chen@intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@linux.intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/aO+7MeSMV29VdbQs@e133380.arm.com/
Signed-off-by: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/cmt_test.c
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/mba_test.c
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/mbm_test.c
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/resctrl.h
tools/testing/selftests/resctrl/resctrl_val.c