1 CPU hotplug Support in Linux(tm) Kernel
5 Rusty Russell <rusty@rustycorp.com.au>
6 Srivatsa Vaddagiri <vatsa@in.ibm.com>
8 Zwane Mwaikambo <zwane@arm.linux.org.uk>
10 Nathan Lynch <nathanl@austin.ibm.com>
11 Joel Schopp <jschopp@austin.ibm.com>
13 Ashok Raj <ashok.raj@intel.com>
15 Authors: Ashok Raj <ashok.raj@intel.com>
16 Lots of feedback: Nathan Lynch <nathanl@austin.ibm.com>,
17 Joel Schopp <jschopp@austin.ibm.com>
21 Modern advances in system architectures have introduced advanced error
22 reporting and correction capabilities in processors. CPU architectures permit
23 partitioning support, where compute resources of a single CPU could be made
24 available to virtual machine environments. There are couple OEMS that
25 support NUMA hardware which are hot pluggable as well, where physical
26 node insertion and removal require support for CPU hotplug.
28 Such advances require CPUs available to a kernel to be removed either for
29 provisioning reasons, or for RAS purposes to keep an offending CPU off
30 system execution path. Hence the need for CPU hotplug support in the
33 A more novel use of CPU-hotplug support is its use today in suspend
34 resume support for SMP. Dual-core and HT support makes even
35 a laptop run SMP kernels which didn't support these methods. SMP support
36 for suspend/resume is a work in progress.
38 General Stuff about CPU Hotplug
39 --------------------------------
43 maxcpus=n Restrict boot time cpus to n. Say if you have 4 cpus, using
44 maxcpus=2 will only boot 2. You can choose to bring the
45 other cpus later online, read FAQ's for more info.
47 additional_cpus=n [x86_64 only] use this to limit hotpluggable cpus.
49 cpu_possible_map = cpu_present_map + additional_cpus
53 [More on cpumaps and primitive to manipulate, please check
54 include/linux/cpumask.h that has more descriptive text.]
56 cpu_possible_map: Bitmap of possible CPUs that can ever be available in the
57 system. This is used to allocate some boot time memory for per_cpu variables
58 that aren't designed to grow/shrink as CPUs are made available or removed.
59 Once set during boot time discovery phase, the map is static, i.e no bits
60 are added or removed anytime. Trimming it accurately for your system needs
61 upfront can save some boot time memory. See below for how we use heuristics
62 in x86_64 case to keep this under check.
64 cpu_online_map: Bitmap of all CPUs currently online. Its set in __cpu_up()
65 after a cpu is available for kernel scheduling and ready to receive
66 interrupts from devices. Its cleared when a cpu is brought down using
67 __cpu_disable(), before which all OS services including interrupts are
68 migrated to another target CPU.
70 cpu_present_map: Bitmap of CPUs currently present in the system. Not all
71 of them may be online. When physical hotplug is processed by the relevant
72 subsystem (e.g ACPI) can change and new bit either be added or removed
73 from the map depending on the event is hot-add/hot-remove. There are currently
74 no locking rules as of now. Typical usage is to init topology during boot,
75 at which time hotplug is disabled.
77 You really dont need to manipulate any of the system cpu maps. They should
78 be read-only for most use. When setting up per-cpu resources almost always use
79 cpu_possible_map/for_each_cpu() to iterate.
81 Never use anything other than cpumask_t to represent bitmap of CPUs.
83 #include <linux/cpumask.h>
85 for_each_cpu - Iterate over cpu_possible_map
86 for_each_online_cpu - Iterate over cpu_online_map
87 for_each_present_cpu - Iterate over cpu_present_map
88 for_each_cpu_mask(x,mask) - Iterate over some random collection of cpu mask.
90 #include <linux/cpu.h>
91 lock_cpu_hotplug() and unlock_cpu_hotplug():
93 The above calls are used to inhibit cpu hotplug operations. While holding the
94 cpucontrol mutex, cpu_online_map will not change. If you merely need to avoid
95 cpus going away, you could also use preempt_disable() and preempt_enable()
96 for those sections. Just remember the critical section cannot call any
97 function that can sleep or schedule this process away. The preempt_disable()
98 will work as long as stop_machine_run() is used to take a cpu down.
100 CPU Hotplug - Frequently Asked Questions.
102 Q: How to i enable my kernel to support CPU hotplug?
103 A: When doing make defconfig, Enable CPU hotplug support
105 "Processor type and Features" -> Support for Hotpluggable CPUs
107 Make sure that you have CONFIG_HOTPLUG, and CONFIG_SMP turned on as well.
109 You would need to enable CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU for SMP suspend/resume support
112 Q: What architectures support CPU hotplug?
113 A: As of 2.6.14, the following architectures support CPU hotplug.
115 i386 (Intel), ppc, ppc64, parisc, s390, ia64 and x86_64
117 Q: How to test if hotplug is supported on the newly built kernel?
118 A: You should now notice an entry in sysfs.
120 Check if sysfs is mounted, using the "mount" command. You should notice
121 an entry as shown below in the output.
124 none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
127 if this is not mounted, do the following.
130 #mount -t sysfs sys /sys
132 now you should see entries for all present cpu, the following is an example
136 #/sys/devices/system/cpu
139 drwxr-xr-x 10 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 .
140 drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 0 Sep 19 07:45 ..
141 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu0
142 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu1
143 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu2
144 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu3
145 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu4
146 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu5
147 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:44 cpu6
148 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Sep 19 07:48 cpu7
150 Under each directory you would find an "online" file which is the control
151 file to logically online/offline a processor.
153 Q: Does hot-add/hot-remove refer to physical add/remove of cpus?
154 A: The usage of hot-add/remove may not be very consistently used in the code.
155 CONFIG_CPU_HOTPLUG enables logical online/offline capability in the kernel.
156 To support physical addition/removal, one would need some BIOS hooks and
157 the platform should have something like an attention button in PCI hotplug.
158 CONFIG_ACPI_HOTPLUG_CPU enables ACPI support for physical add/remove of CPUs.
160 Q: How do i logically offline a CPU?
163 #echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online
165 once the logical offline is successful, check
167 #cat /proc/interrupts
169 you should now not see the CPU that you removed. Also online file will report
170 the state as 0 when a cpu if offline and 1 when its online.
172 #To display the current cpu state.
173 #cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpuX/online
175 Q: Why cant i remove CPU0 on some systems?
176 A: Some architectures may have some special dependency on a certain CPU.
178 For e.g in IA64 platforms we have ability to sent platform interrupts to the
179 OS. a.k.a Corrected Platform Error Interrupts (CPEI). In current ACPI
180 specifications, we didn't have a way to change the target CPU. Hence if the
181 current ACPI version doesn't support such re-direction, we disable that CPU
182 by making it not-removable.
184 In such cases you will also notice that the online file is missing under cpu0.
186 Q: How do i find out if a particular CPU is not removable?
187 A: Depending on the implementation, some architectures may show this by the
188 absence of the "online" file. This is done if it can be determined ahead of
189 time that this CPU cannot be removed.
191 In some situations, this can be a run time check, i.e if you try to remove the
192 last CPU, this will not be permitted. You can find such failures by
193 investigating the return value of the "echo" command.
195 Q: What happens when a CPU is being logically offlined?
196 A: The following happen, listed in no particular order :-)
198 - A notification is sent to in-kernel registered modules by sending an event
200 - All process is migrated away from this outgoing CPU to a new CPU
201 - All interrupts targeted to this CPU is migrated to a new CPU
202 - timers/bottom half/task lets are also migrated to a new CPU
203 - Once all services are migrated, kernel calls an arch specific routine
204 __cpu_disable() to perform arch specific cleanup.
205 - Once this is successful, an event for successful cleanup is sent by an event
208 "It is expected that each service cleans up when the CPU_DOWN_PREPARE
209 notifier is called, when CPU_DEAD is called its expected there is nothing
210 running on behalf of this CPU that was offlined"
212 Q: If i have some kernel code that needs to be aware of CPU arrival and
213 departure, how to i arrange for proper notification?
214 A: This is what you would need in your kernel code to receive notifications.
216 #include <linux/cpu.h>
217 static int __cpuinit foobar_cpu_callback(struct notifier_block *nfb,
218 unsigned long action, void *hcpu)
220 unsigned int cpu = (unsigned long)hcpu;
224 foobar_online_action(cpu);
227 foobar_dead_action(cpu);
233 static struct notifier_block foobar_cpu_notifer =
235 .notifier_call = foobar_cpu_callback,
239 In your init function,
241 register_cpu_notifier(&foobar_cpu_notifier);
243 You can fail PREPARE notifiers if something doesn't work to prepare resources.
244 This will stop the activity and send a following CANCELED event back.
246 CPU_DEAD should not be failed, its just a goodness indication, but bad
247 things will happen if a notifier in path sent a BAD notify code.
249 Q: I don't see my action being called for all CPUs already up and running?
250 A: Yes, CPU notifiers are called only when new CPUs are on-lined or offlined.
251 If you need to perform some action for each cpu already in the system, then
253 for_each_online_cpu(i) {
254 foobar_cpu_callback(&foobar_cpu_notifier, CPU_UP_PREPARE, i);
255 foobar_cpu_callback(&foobar-cpu_notifier, CPU_ONLINE, i);
258 Q: If i would like to develop cpu hotplug support for a new architecture,
259 what do i need at a minimum?
260 A: The following are what is required for CPU hotplug infrastructure to work
263 - Make sure you have an entry in Kconfig to enable CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU
264 - __cpu_up() - Arch interface to bring up a CPU
265 - __cpu_disable() - Arch interface to shutdown a CPU, no more interrupts
266 can be handled by the kernel after the routine
267 returns. Including local APIC timers etc are
269 - __cpu_die() - This actually supposed to ensure death of the CPU.
270 Actually look at some example code in other arch
271 that implement CPU hotplug. The processor is taken
272 down from the idle() loop for that specific
273 architecture. __cpu_die() typically waits for some
274 per_cpu state to be set, to ensure the processor
275 dead routine is called to be sure positively.
277 Q: I need to ensure that a particular cpu is not removed when there is some
278 work specific to this cpu is in progress.
279 A: First switch the current thread context to preferred cpu
281 int my_func_on_cpu(int cpu)
283 cpumask_t saved_mask, new_mask = CPU_MASK_NONE;
284 int curr_cpu, err = 0;
286 saved_mask = current->cpus_allowed;
287 cpu_set(cpu, new_mask);
288 err = set_cpus_allowed(current, new_mask);
294 * If we got scheduled out just after the return from
295 * set_cpus_allowed() before running the work, this ensures
298 curr_cpu = get_cpu();
300 if (curr_cpu != cpu) {
305 * Do work : But cant sleep, since get_cpu() disables preempt
310 set_cpus_allowed(current, saved_mask);
315 Q: How do we determine how many CPUs are available for hotplug.
316 A: There is no clear spec defined way from ACPI that can give us that
317 information today. Based on some input from Natalie of Unisys,
318 that the ACPI MADT (Multiple APIC Description Tables) marks those possible
319 CPUs in a system with disabled status.
321 Andi implemented some simple heuristics that count the number of disabled
322 CPUs in MADT as hotpluggable CPUS. In the case there are no disabled CPUS
323 we assume 1/2 the number of CPUs currently present can be hotplugged.
325 Caveat: Today's ACPI MADT can only provide 256 entries since the apicid field
326 in MADT is only 8 bits.
328 User Space Notification
330 Hotplug support for devices is common in Linux today. Its being used today to
331 support automatic configuration of network, usb and pci devices. A hotplug
332 event can be used to invoke an agent script to perform the configuration task.
334 You can add /etc/hotplug/cpu.agent to handle hotplug notification user space
339 # Kernel hotplug params include:
340 #ACTION=%s [online or offline]
344 . ./hotplug.functions
348 echo `date` ":cpu.agent" add cpu >> /tmp/hotplug.txt
351 echo `date` ":cpu.agent" remove cpu >>/tmp/hotplug.txt
354 debug_mesg CPU $ACTION event not supported