-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Linux kernel performance regressions
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 04:33:06 -0800
From: Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>
To: OpenLDAP-devel@openldap.org <OpenLDAP-devel@openldap.org>
We upgraded from kernel 3.5 to 3.12.3 to update some of our benchmark
numbers
and hit some major performance regressions, mainly because the kernel is
throttling processes that use too much CPU. This is definitely a kernel
bug,
as the throttle mechanism belongs to the realtime scheduler and none of the
processes being affected had realtime priority when the throttle kicked in.
I've posted a query to the linux kernel mailing list but haven't gotten any
satisfactory answers yet. The same throttling behavior also occurs with
3.11.10, but there are no corresponding messages in the kernel log.
The email thread is here
http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1312.1/02313.html
A patch that may be related is described here
http://lkml.org/lkml/2013/5/29/640 which explains part of the observed
behavior, but not all of it (and indeed may be a red herring, unless it has
some interaction with the realtime scheduler).
There appear to be other serious networking related regressions in 3.12 as
well. http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1312.1/02588.html
I recommend staying on 3.10 for production servers until this is sorted
out.
--
-- Howard Chu
CTO, Symas Corp. http://www.symas.com
Director, Highland Sun http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
Chief Architect, OpenLDAP http://www.openldap.org/project/