18 Jun, 2014

1 commit


04 Jun, 2014

1 commit


28 May, 2014

1 commit

  • The current logic for blocking tag allocation is rather confusing, as we
    first allocated and then free again a tag in blk_mq_wait_for_tags, just
    to attempt a non-blocking allocation and then repeat if someone else
    managed to grab the tag before us.

    Instead change blk_mq_alloc_request_pinned to simply do a blocking tag
    allocation itself and use the request we get back from it.

    Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Christoph Hellwig
     

24 May, 2014

1 commit

  • Export the blk-mq in-flight tag iterator for driver consumption.
    This is particularly useful in exception paths or SRSI where
    in-flight IOs need to be cancelled and/or reissued. The NVMe driver
    conversion will use this.

    Signed-off-by: Sam Bradshaw
    Signed-off-by: Matias Bjørling
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Sam Bradshaw
     

21 May, 2014

1 commit

  • For request_fn based devices, the block layer exports a 'nr_requests'
    file through sysfs to allow adjusting of queue depth on the fly.
    Currently this returns -EINVAL for blk-mq, since it's not wired up.
    Wire this up for blk-mq, so that it now also always dynamic
    adjustments of the allowed queue depth for any given block device
    managed by blk-mq.

    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

20 May, 2014

2 commits


14 May, 2014

1 commit

  • This adds support for active queue tracking, meaning that the
    blk-mq tagging maintains a count of active users of a tag set.
    This allows us to maintain a notion of fairness between users,
    so that we can distribute the tag depth evenly without starving
    some users while allowing others to try unfair deep queues.

    If sharing of a tag set is detected, each hardware queue will
    track the depth of its own queue. And if this exceeds the total
    depth divided by the number of active queues, the user is actively
    throttled down.

    The active queue count is done lazily to avoid bouncing that data
    between submitter and completer. Each hardware queue gets marked
    active when it allocates its first tag, and gets marked inactive
    when 1) the last tag is cleared, and 2) the queue timeout grace
    period has passed.

    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

10 May, 2014

1 commit

  • For best performance, spreading tags over multiple cachelines
    makes the tagging more efficient on multicore systems. But since
    we have 8 * sizeof(unsigned long) tags per cacheline, we don't
    always get a nice spread.

    Attempt to spread the tags over at least 4 cachelines, using fewer
    number of bits per unsigned long if we have to. This improves
    tagging performance in setups with 32-128 tags. For higher depths,
    the spread is the same as before (BITS_PER_LONG tags per cacheline).

    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

09 May, 2014

1 commit

  • blk-mq currently uses percpu_ida for tag allocation. But that only
    works well if the ratio between tag space and number of CPUs is
    sufficiently high. For most devices and systems, that is not the
    case. The end result if that we either only utilize the tag space
    partially, or we end up attempting to fully exhaust it and run
    into lots of lock contention with stealing between CPUs. This is
    not optimal.

    This new tagging scheme is a hybrid bitmap allocator. It uses
    two tricks to both be SMP friendly and allow full exhaustion
    of the space:

    1) We cache the last allocated (or freed) tag on a per blk-mq
    software context basis. This allows us to limit the space
    we have to search. The key element here is not caching it
    in the shared tag structure, otherwise we end up dirtying
    more shared cache lines on each allocate/free operation.

    2) The tag space is split into cache line sized groups, and
    each context will start off randomly in that space. Even up
    to full utilization of the space, this divides the tag users
    efficiently into cache line groups, avoiding dirtying the same
    one both between allocators and between allocator and freeer.

    This scheme shows drastically better behaviour, both on small
    tag spaces but on large ones as well. It has been tested extensively
    to show better performance for all the cases blk-mq cares about.

    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

30 Apr, 2014

1 commit

  • blk_mq_wait_for_tags() is only able to wait for "normal" tags,
    not reserved tags. Pass in which one we should attempt to get
    a tag for, so that waiting for reserved tags will work.

    Reserved tags are used for internal commands, which are usually
    serialized. Hence no waiting generally takes place, but we should
    ensure that it actually works if users need that functionality.

    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe
     

16 Apr, 2014

1 commit


25 Oct, 2013

1 commit

  • Linux currently has two models for block devices:

    - The classic request_fn based approach, where drivers use struct
    request units for IO. The block layer provides various helper
    functionalities to let drivers share code, things like tag
    management, timeout handling, queueing, etc.

    - The "stacked" approach, where a driver squeezes in between the
    block layer and IO submitter. Since this bypasses the IO stack,
    driver generally have to manage everything themselves.

    With drivers being written for new high IOPS devices, the classic
    request_fn based driver doesn't work well enough. The design dates
    back to when both SMP and high IOPS was rare. It has problems with
    scaling to bigger machines, and runs into scaling issues even on
    smaller machines when you have IOPS in the hundreds of thousands
    per device.

    The stacked approach is then most often selected as the model
    for the driver. But this means that everybody has to re-invent
    everything, and along with that we get all the problems again
    that the shared approach solved.

    This commit introduces blk-mq, block multi queue support. The
    design is centered around per-cpu queues for queueing IO, which
    then funnel down into x number of hardware submission queues.
    We might have a 1:1 mapping between the two, or it might be
    an N:M mapping. That all depends on what the hardware supports.

    blk-mq provides various helper functions, which include:

    - Scalable support for request tagging. Most devices need to
    be able to uniquely identify a request both in the driver and
    to the hardware. The tagging uses per-cpu caches for freed
    tags, to enable cache hot reuse.

    - Timeout handling without tracking request on a per-device
    basis. Basically the driver should be able to get a notification,
    if a request happens to fail.

    - Optional support for non 1:1 mappings between issue and
    submission queues. blk-mq can redirect IO completions to the
    desired location.

    - Support for per-request payloads. Drivers almost always need
    to associate a request structure with some driver private
    command structure. Drivers can tell blk-mq this at init time,
    and then any request handed to the driver will have the
    required size of memory associated with it.

    - Support for merging of IO, and plugging. The stacked model
    gets neither of these. Even for high IOPS devices, merging
    sequential IO reduces per-command overhead and thus
    increases bandwidth.

    For now, this is provided as a potential 3rd queueing model, with
    the hope being that, as it matures, it can replace both the classic
    and stacked model. That would get us back to having just 1 real
    model for block devices, leaving the stacked approach to dm/md
    devices (as it was originally intended).

    Contributions in this patch from the following people:

    Shaohua Li
    Alexander Gordeev
    Christoph Hellwig
    Mike Christie
    Matias Bjorling
    Jeff Moyer

    Acked-by: Christoph Hellwig
    Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

    Jens Axboe