A process's CPU affinity mask determines the set of CPUs on which
it is eligible to run.
On a multiprocessor system, setting the CPU affinity mask
can be used to obtain performance benefits.
For example,
by dedicating one CPU to a particular process
(i.e., setting the affinity mask of that process to specify a single CPU,
and setting the affinity mask of all other processes to exclude that CPU),
it is possible to ensure maximum execution speed for that process.
Restricting a process to run on a single CPU also avoids
the performance cost caused by the cache invalidation that occurs
when a process ceases to execute on one CPU and then
recommences execution on a different CPU.
A CPU affinity mask is represented by the
cpu_set_t
structure, a "CPU set", pointed to by
mask.
A set of macros for manipulating CPU sets is described in
CPU_SET(3).
sched_setaffinity()
sets the CPU affinity mask of the process whose ID is
pid
to the value specified by
mask.
If
pid
is zero, then the calling process is used.
The argument
cpusetsize
is the length (in bytes) of the data pointed to by
mask.
Normally this argument would be specified as
sizeof(cpu_set_t).
If the process specified by
pid
is not currently running on one of the CPUs specified in
mask,
then that process is migrated to one of the CPUs specified in
mask.
sched_getaffinity()
writes the affinity mask of the process whose ID is
pid
into the
cpu_set_t
structure pointed to by
mask.
The
cpusetsize
argument specifies the size (in bytes) of
mask.
If
pid
is zero, then the mask of the calling process is returned.
RETURN VALUE
On success,
sched_setaffinity()
and
sched_getaffinity()
return 0.
On error, -1 is returned, and
errno
is set appropriately.
ERRORS
EFAULT
A supplied memory address was invalid.
EINVAL
The affinity bit mask
mask
contains no processors that are currently physically on the system
and permitted to the process according to any restrictions that
may be imposed by the "cpuset" mechanism described in
cpuset(7).
EINVAL
(sched_getaffinity()
and, in kernels before 2.6.9,
sched_setaffinity())
cpusetsize
is smaller than the size of the affinity mask used by the kernel.
EPERM
(sched_setaffinity())
The calling process does not have appropriate privileges.
The caller needs an effective user ID equal to the user ID
or effective user ID of the process identified by
pid,
or it must possess the
CAP_SYS_NICE
capability.
ESRCH
The process whose ID is pid could not be found.
VERSIONS
The CPU affinity system calls were introduced in Linux kernel 2.5.8.
The system call wrappers were introduced in glibc 2.3.
Initially, the glibc interfaces included a
cpusetsize
argument, typed as
unsigned int.
In glibc 2.3.3, the
cpusetsize
argument was removed, but was then restored in glibc 2.3.4, with type
size_t.
CONFORMING TO
These system calls are Linux-specific.
NOTES
After a call to
sched_setaffinity(),
the set of CPUs on which the process will actually run is
the intersection of the set specified in the
mask
argument and the set of CPUs actually present on the system.
The system may further restrict the set of CPUs on which the process
runs if the "cpuset" mechanism described in
cpuset(7)
is being used.
These restrictions on the actual set of CPUs on which the process
will run are silently imposed by the kernel.
The affinity mask is actually a per-thread attribute that can be
adjusted independently for each of the threads in a thread group.
The value returned from a call to
gettid(2)
can be passed in the argument
pid.
Specifying
pid
as 0 will set the attribute for the calling thread,
and passing the value returned from a call to
getpid(2)
will set the attribute for the main thread of the thread group.
(If you are using the POSIX threads API, then use
pthread_setaffinity_np (3)
instead of
sched_setaffinity().)
A child created via
fork(2)
inherits its parent's CPU affinity mask.
The affinity mask is preserved across an
execve(2).
This manual page describes the glibc interface for the CPU affinity calls.
The actual system call interface is slightly different, with the
mask
being typed as
unsigned long *,
reflecting the fact that the underlying implementation of CPU
sets is a simple bit mask.
On success, the raw
sched_getaffinity()
system call returns the size (in bytes) of the
cpumask_t
data type that is used internally by the kernel to
represent the CPU set bit mask.
This page is part of release 3.14 of the Linux
man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.