Linux CFS and task group

April 27, 2020

I dived into the kernel scheduler code under kernel/sched/ to understand how CFS works and how the task group cpu.shares value is used in CFS.

Update [Jul/21]: Added info for cgroup v2 in section 3.2.

1. CFS concepts

In CFS, every running entity, a process or a task group, has a virtual runtime (vruntime) which accounts for the entity's CPU usage. The scheduling goal of CFS is to keep the vruntime of all running entities to be the same.

The vruntime of an entity is calculated by dividing the physical run time of the entity with a weight factor. Assume a CPU has nn running entities. Entity ii has weight wiw_i and CPU time tit_i, i=1,2,...,ni=1, 2, ..., n then

vruntime=t1w1=t2w2=...=tnwn\text{vruntime} = \frac{t_1}{w_1} = \frac{t_2}{w_2} = ... = \frac{t_n}{w_n}

For any time period TT, we have:

ti=wiwTt_i = \frac{w_i}{\sum w}T

Thus the allocated CPU time of an entity is proportional to its weight.

2. Implementation

2.1. Nice level, priority and weight

User can change the nice level of a process with the nice() syscall or the setpriority() syscall. nice levels are mapped to priority values using the macro NICE_TO_PRIO(), and priority values are mapped to weights using the lookup table sched_prio_to_weight. The following table shows these mappings:

nice level priority weight
20-20 (min) 100100 887611024×1.252088761 \approx 1024 \times 1.25^{20}
n[19,1]n\in[-19, -1] 120+n120 + n 1024×1.25n\approx 1024 \times 1.25^{-n}
00 (default) 120120 10241024
n[1,18]n\in[1, 18] 120+n120 + n 1024×1.25n\approx 1024 \times 1.25^{-n}
1919 (max) 139139 151024×1.251915 \approx 1024 \times 1.25^{-19}

The comment above sched_prio_to_weight explains why 1.25 is used as the base for weight calculation:

 * Nice levels are multiplicative, with a gentle 10% change for every
 * nice level changed. I.e. when a CPU-bound task goes from nice 0 to
 * nice 1, it will get ~10% less CPU time than another CPU-bound task
 * that remained on nice 0.
 * The "10% effect" is relative and cumulative: from _any_ nice level,
 * if you go up 1 level, it's -10% CPU usage, if you go down 1 level
 * it's +10% CPU usage. (to achieve that we use a multiplier of 1.25.
 * If a task goes up by ~10% and another task goes down by ~10% then
 * the relative distance between them is ~25%.)

The above comments doesn't make perfect sense to me. But we can do a few examples to understand the effect of nice levels.

Example 1: One CPU with 2 running processes, p1 and p2. Both processes have the default weight 1024. Their CPU run times are

t1=t2=0.5Tt_1 = t_2 = 0.5T

When the weight of p1 changed from 1024 to 820 (from nice 0 to nice 1), their CPU run times become

t1=820820+1024T0.4447T,t2=1024820+1024T0.5553Tt_1 = \frac{820}{820+1024}T \approx 0.4447T,\quad\quad t_2 = \frac{1024}{820+1024}T \approx 0.5553T

So p1 gets ~11% less CPU time and p2 gets ~11% more CPU time. The test for this example is here.

Example 2: One CPU with 4 running processes, from p1 to p4. All processes have the default weight. The CPU run times are

t1=t2=t3=t4=0.25Tt_1 = t_2 = t_3 = t_4 = 0.25T

When the weight of p1 changed from 1024 to 820 (from nice 0 to nice1), their CPU run times become

t1=820820+3×1024T0.2107T,t2=t3=t4=1024820+3×1024T0.2631Tt_1 = \frac{820}{820+3\times1024}T \approx 0.2107T,\quad t_2 = t_3 = t_4 = \frac{1024}{820+3\times1024}T \approx 0.2631T

p1 gets ~16% less CPU time and the other processes get ~5% more CPU time. The test for this example is here.

2.2. Data structures

The following lists the major data structures and the related fields. Their connections are shown in the following figure.

struct rq {
    struct cfs_rq   cfs;

struct rq is the per-CPU data structure that stores system run queue information. Its cfs field stores the root level CFS run queue information. The run queue info for realtime scheduler rt_rq and deadline scheduler dl_rq are not shown here.

struct cfs_rq {
    struct load_weight      load;
    unsigned int            nr_running;
    u64                     min_vruntime;
    struct rb_root_cached   tasks_timeline;
     * 'curr' points to currently running entity on this cfs_rq.
     * It is set to NULL otherwise (i.e when none are currently running).
    struct sched_entity     *curr;
    struct task_group       *tg;    /* group that "owns" this runqueue */

struct cfs_rq stores information of CFS run queue. Each CPU has a root level cfs_rq, embedded in struct rq. Every task group also has one cfs_rq per CPU. The "queue" is implemented as a red-black tree of struct sched_entity. struct cfs_rq has the following related fields:

  • load: the sum of sched_entity (or se) weights on the run queue.

  • nr_running: the number of se on the run queue.

  • min_vruntime: the minimum vruntime of all se on the run queue. This value is used to initialize the vruntime of a se when the se is enqueued.

  • tasks_timeline: the red-black tree's root node.

  • curr: the currently running entity on this cfs_rq.

  • tg: the task group that owns the cfs_rq.

struct sched_entity {
    struct load_weight              load;
    struct rb_node                  run_node;
    u64                             vruntime;
    struct sched_entity             *parent;
    /* rq on which this entity is (to be) queued: */
    struct cfs_rq                   *cfs_rq;
    /* rq "owned" by this entity/group: */
    struct cfs_rq                   *my_q;

struct task_struct {
    struct sched_entity             se;
    struct task_group               *sched_task_group;

struct task_group {
    /* schedulable entities of this group on each CPU */
    struct sched_entity     **se;
    /* runqueue "owned" by this group on each CPU */
    struct cfs_rq           **cfs_rq;
    struct task_group       *parent;
    unsigned long           shares;

struct sched_entity stores scheduling information. Each struct task_struct contains an embedded struct sched_entity. Also each struct task_group contains pointers to a list of per-CPU struct sched_entity.

struct sched_entity contains the following fields:

  • load: the weight of the entity.

  • run_node: the red-black tree node.

  • vruntime: the vruntime of the entity.

  • parent: the se of the parent task group.

  • cfs_rq: the CFS run queue that manages the se.

  • my_q: for a task se, this field is NULL; for a task group se, this field is the task group's cfs_rq on the same CPU.

struct task_group contains the following fields:

  • se: se[i] is the task groups's sched_entity data for ii-th CPU.

  • cfs_rq: cfs_rq[i] is the task group's cfs_rq data for ii-th CPU.

  • parent: the parent task group.

  • shares: the task group cpu.shares, scaled by 1024 for fixed point computation.

The following figure shows an simple example of task group tree and the corresponding kernel data structures.

As shown in the sub-figure at the bottom right, The system has a task group tg1 under the root task group. Process p1 belongs to tg1 and process p2 belongs to the root task group. Both p1 and p2 are running on the ii-th CPU.

The dashed lines mark the connection formed by red-black trees.

2.3. Initializing vruntime

When a se is added to a cfs_rq, the se->vruntime is initialized using the cfs_rq->min_vruntime. For example, the following is a code trace for the fork() syscall:

--> p = copy_process(NULL, trace, NUMA_NO_NODE, args)
    --> retval = sched_fork(clone_flags, p)
        --> p->sched_class->task_fork(p)       // task_fork_fair()
            --> se->vruntime = curr->vruntime  // se is child, curr is parent
            --> place_entity(cfs_rq, se, 1)
                --> se->vruntime = max(se->vruntime, cfs_rq->min_vruntime+slice)
            --> se->vruntime -= cfs_rq->min_vruntime      // (1)
--> wake_up_new_task(p)
    --> activate_task(rq, p, ENQUEUE_NOCLOCK)
        --> enqueue_task(rq, p, flags)  // enqueue_task_fair()
            --> enqueue_entity(cfs_rq, se, flags)
                --> se->vruntime += cfs_rq->min_vruntime  // (2)

In function place_entity(), vruntime of the child process is set according to min_vruntime of the cfs_rq. In (1), the vruntime is counted as a delta. And in (2), when enqueuing se of the child process, the vruntime is set by adding the delta back to the new cfs_rq->min_vruntime.

2.4. Updating vruntime

Function update_curr() is called at many places to update vruntime of the current entity. The follwoing shows the related code snippet:

static void update_curr(struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq)
    struct sched_entity *curr = cfs_rq->curr;
    u64 now = rq_clock_task(rq_of(cfs_rq));
    u64 delta_exec;

    delta_exec = now - curr->exec_start;
    curr->exec_start = now;
    curr->vruntime += calc_delta_fair(delta_exec, curr);

In line 7, the new CPU time of the current entity is calculated as delta_exec. In line 9, delta_exec is scaled and added to vruntime. Finally in line 10, the cfs_rq->min_vruntime is updated accordingly in update_min_vruntime().

Function calc_delta_fair() multiplies delta_exec by a relative weight factor and returns


NICE_0_LOAD is the default weight (1024) for nice level 0. So for a processe with the default nice level, its vruntime equals to its physical CPU run time.

2.5. Scheduling

The following shows the related code trace of function __schedule():

--> next = pick_next_task(rq, prev, &rf)  // pick_next_task_fair()
--> rq = context_switch(rq, prev, next, &rf);

Function pick_next_task_fair() could be simplified as follows:

struct task_struct *
pick_next_task_fair(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev)
    struct cfs_rq *cfs_rq = &rq->cfs;
    struct sched_entity *se;
    struct task_struct *p;

    do {
        struct sched_entity *curr = cfs_rq->curr;
        se = pick_next_entity(cfs_rq, curr);
        cfs_rq = se->my_q;
    } while (cfs_rq);

    p = task_of(se);
    if (prev != p) {
        struct sched_entity *pse = &prev->se;

        while (!(cfs_rq = is_same_group(se, pse))) {
            int se_depth = se->depth;
            int pse_depth = pse->depth;

            if (se_depth <= pse_depth) {
                put_prev_entity(cfs_rq_of(pse), pse);
                pse = parent_entity(pse);
            if (se_depth >= pse_depth) {
                set_next_entity(cfs_rq_of(se), se);
                se = parent_entity(se);

        put_prev_entity(cfs_rq, pse);
        set_next_entity(cfs_rq, se);

    return p;

The first loop from line 8 to 12 walks the tree of cfs_rq from top to bottom to find a leaf se with the minimum vruntime. The leaf se belongs to a task which is retrieved in line 14. Function pick_next_entity() may take the leftmost entity from the red-black tree.

The second loop from line 18 to 30 walks the tree from bottom to top to find the common ancestor control group of the previous task and the newly selected task. The entities on the path from the previous task to the common ancestor are marked as noncurrent, by setting their corresponding cfs_rq->curr to NULL. The entities on path from the new task to the common ancestor are marked as current, by setting the corresponding cfs_rq->curr to these entities. These are done in function put_prev_entity() and set_next_entity() respectively.

3. Task groups

The weights of processes are defined by their nice values. On the other hand, the weights of task groups are defined in the groups' cpu.shares files in /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu/. The default value of cpu.shares is 1024.

The cpu.shares is split up by the group's per-CPU entitiess. Each entity gets a portion of cpu.shares proportional to the task group's running load on the CPU. So for an entity of a task group on CPU ii:

weighti=loadiloadshares\text{weight}_i = \frac{\text{load}_i}{\sum \text{load}} \text{shares}

Here, the "load" is different to system load average. It is relative to the sum of weights of tasks in a task group. Some details of the load calculation can be found in this lwn article.

As an example, in the previous figure, if the host has 4 CPUs with the same load as in the figure, i.e. both p1 and p2 have 4 running threads/tasks distributed evenly on the 4 CPUs, then each sched_entity of tg1 has a weight of 256, and each sched_entity of p2 has a weight of 1024. So p2 takes 4 times more CPU time than p1, even though they have the same nice values.

3.1. Autogrouping

Linux has an autogrouping feature that automatically creates task groups for sessions. Some distributions have autogrouping enabled by default. So if you are running two processes in different ssh sessions, changing the nice values of the processes does not affect the their relative priorities. See man 7 sched for more info about the autogroup feature.

3.2. Cgroup v2

In cgroup v2, the cpu.shares is renamed to cpu.weight, which has a default value of 100. The value is rescaled to 1024 in the function cpu_weight_write_u64.