Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:13:39 +0800 | Subject | Re: [PATCH v1 5/9] block: loop: convert to blk-mq | From | Ming Lei <> |
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On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 10:58 AM, Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> wrote: > On 2014-08-20 21:54, Ming Lei wrote: >>>> >>>> From my investigation, context switch increases almost 50% with >>>> workqueue compared with kthread in loop in a quad-core VM. With >>>> kthread, requests may be handled as batch in cases which won't be >>>> blocked in read()/write()(like null_blk, tmpfs, ...), but it is >>>> impossible >>>> with >>>> workqueue any more. Also block plug&unplug should have been used >>>> with kthread to optimize the case, especially when kernel AIO is >>>> applied, >>>> still impossible with work queue too. >>> >>> >>> >>> OK, that one is actually a good point, since one need not do per-item >>> queueing. We could handle different units, though. And we should have >>> proper >>> marking of the last item in a chain of stuff, so we might even be able to >>> offload based on that instead of doing single items. It wont help the >>> sync >>> case, but for that, workqueue and kthread would be identical. >> >> >> We may do that by introducing callback of queue_rq_list in blk_mq_ops, >> and I will figure out one patch today to see if it can help the case. > > > I don't think we should add to the interface, I prefer keeping it clean like > it is right now. At least not if we can get around it. My point is that the > driver already knows when the chain is complete, when REQ_LAST is set. So > before that event triggers, it need not kick off IO, or at least i could do > it in batches before that. That may not be fully reliable in case of > queueing errors, but if REQ_LAST or 'error return' is used as the way to > kick off pending IO, then that should be good enough. Haven't audited this > in a while, but at least that is the intent of REQ_LAST.
Yes, I thought of too, but driver need another context for handling that, either workqueue or kthread, which may cause the introduced per-device workqueue useless.
thanks,
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