From a8c02c5c09e5492038b54cd6415cf550c3f7f820 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Koundinya Veluri <kouvel@microsoft.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 09:54:18 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Make CPU utilization checks in the thread pool configurable

- On Windows, checking CPU utilization seems to involve a small amount of overhead, which can become noticeable or even significant in some scenarios. This change makes the intervals of time over which CPU utilization is computed configurable. Increasing the interval increases the period at which CPU utilization is updated. The same config var can also be used to disable CPU utilization checks and have features that use it behave as though CPU utilization is low.
- CPU utilization is used by the starvation heuristic and hill climbing. When CPU utilization is very high, the starvation heuristic reduces the rate of thread injection in starved cases. When CPU utilization is high, hill climbing avoids settling on higher thread count control values.
- CPU utilization is currently updated when the gate thread performs periodic activities, which happens typically every 500 ms when a worker thread is active. There is one gate thread per .NET process.
- In scenarios where there are many .NET processes running, and where many of them frequently but lightly use the thread pool, overall CPU usage may be relatively low, but the overhead from CPU utilization checks can bubble up to a noticeable portion of overall CPU usage. In a scenario involving 100s of .NET processes, it was seen that CPU utilization checks amount to 0.5-1% of overall CPU usage on the machine, which was considered significant.
---
 .../PortableThreadPool.GateThread.cs          | 31 +++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 28 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/libraries/System.Private.CoreLib/src/System/Threading/PortableThreadPool.GateThread.cs b/src/libraries/System.Private.CoreLib/src/System/Threading/PortableThreadPool.GateThread.cs
index 5d1b79a3098e05..d59cde103713e5 100644
--- a/src/libraries/System.Private.CoreLib/src/System/Threading/PortableThreadPool.GateThread.cs
+++ b/src/libraries/System.Private.CoreLib/src/System/Threading/PortableThreadPool.GateThread.cs
@@ -27,10 +27,26 @@ private static void GateThreadStart()
                 bool debuggerBreakOnWorkStarvation =
                     AppContextConfigHelper.GetBooleanConfig("System.Threading.ThreadPool.DebugBreakOnWorkerStarvation", false);
 
+                // CPU utilization is updated when the gate thread performs periodic activities (GateActivitiesPeriodMs), so
+                // that would also affect the actual interval. Set to 0 to disable using CPU utilization and have components
+                // behave as though CPU utilization is low. The default value of 1 causes CPU utilization to be updated whenever
+                // the gate thread performs periodic activities.
+                int cpuUtilizationIntervalMs =
+                    AppContextConfigHelper.GetInt32Config(
+                        "System.Threading.ThreadPool.CpuUtilizationIntervalMs",
+                        "DOTNET_ThreadPool_CpuUtilizationIntervalMs",
+                        defaultValue: 1,
+                        allowNegative: false);
+
                 // The first reading is over a time range other than what we are focusing on, so we do not use the read other
                 // than to send it to any runtime-specific implementation that may also use the CPU utilization.
                 CpuUtilizationReader cpuUtilizationReader = default;
-                _ = cpuUtilizationReader.CurrentUtilization;
+                int lastCpuUtilizationRefreshTimeMs = 0;
+                if (cpuUtilizationIntervalMs > 0)
+                {
+                    lastCpuUtilizationRefreshTimeMs = Environment.TickCount;
+                    _ = cpuUtilizationReader.CurrentUtilization;
+                }
 
                 PortableThreadPool threadPoolInstance = ThreadPoolInstance;
                 LowLevelLock threadAdjustmentLock = threadPoolInstance._threadAdjustmentLock;
@@ -102,8 +118,17 @@ private static void GateThreadStart()
                                 (uint)threadPoolInstance.GetAndResetHighWatermarkCountOfThreadsProcessingUserCallbacks());
                         }
 
-                        int cpuUtilization = (int)cpuUtilizationReader.CurrentUtilization;
-                        threadPoolInstance._cpuUtilization = cpuUtilization;
+                        // Determine whether CPU utilization should be updated. CPU utilization is only used by the starvation
+                        // heuristic and hill climbing, and neither of those are active when there is a pending blocking
+                        // adjustment.
+                        if (cpuUtilizationIntervalMs > 0 &&
+                            threadPoolInstance._pendingBlockingAdjustment == PendingBlockingAdjustment.None &&
+                            (uint)(currentTimeMs - lastCpuUtilizationRefreshTimeMs) >= (uint)cpuUtilizationIntervalMs)
+                        {
+                            lastCpuUtilizationRefreshTimeMs = currentTimeMs;
+                            int cpuUtilization = (int)cpuUtilizationReader.CurrentUtilization;
+                            threadPoolInstance._cpuUtilization = cpuUtilization;
+                        }
 
                         if (!disableStarvationDetection &&
                             threadPoolInstance._pendingBlockingAdjustment == PendingBlockingAdjustment.None &&