Re: CFQ idling kills I/O performance on ext4 with blkio cgroup controller

From: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
To: "Srivatsa S. Bhat" <srivatsa@csail.mit.edu>
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-block <linux-block@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, cgroups@vger.kernel.org,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>, Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>,
	Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com>, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>,
	amakhalov@vmware.com, anishs@vmware.com, srivatsab@vmware.com,
	Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@linaro.org>,
	Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>
Subject: Re: CFQ idling kills I/O performance on ext4 with blkio cgroup controller
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:46:12 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <43486E4F-2237-4E40-BDFE-07CFCCFFFA25@linaro.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <7c5e9d11-4a3d-7df4-c1e6-7c95919522ab@csail.mit.edu>

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> Il giorno 12 giu 2019, alle ore 00:34, Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa@csail.mit.edu> ha scritto:
> 
> On 6/2/19 12:04 AM, Srivatsa S. Bhat wrote:
>> On 5/30/19 3:45 AM, Paolo Valente wrote:
>>> 
> [...]
>>> At any rate, since you pointed out that you are interested in
>>> out-of-the-box performance, let me complete the context: in case
>>> low_latency is left set, one gets, in return for this 12% loss,
>>> a) at least 1000% higher responsiveness, e.g., 1000% lower start-up
>>> times of applications under load [1];
>>> b) 500-1000% higher throughput in multi-client server workloads, as I
>>> already pointed out [2].
>>> 
>> 
>> I'm very happy that you could solve the problem without having to
>> compromise on any of the performance characteristics/features of BFQ!
>> 
>> 
>>> I'm going to prepare complete patches.  In addition, if ok for you,
>>> I'll report these results on the bug you created.  Then I guess we can
>>> close it.
>>> 
>> 
>> Sounds great!
>> 
> 
> Hi Paolo,
> 

Hi

> Hope you are doing great!
> 

Sort of, thanks :)

> I was wondering if you got a chance to post these patches to LKML for
> review and inclusion... (No hurry, of course!)
> 

I'm having troubles testing these new patches on 5.2-rc4.  As it
happened with the first release candidates for 5.1, the CPU of my test
machine (Intel Core i7-2760QM@2.40GHz) is so slowed down that results
are heavily distorted with every I/O scheduler.

Unfortunately, I'm not competent enough to spot the cause of this
regression in a feasible amount of time.  I hope it'll go away with
next release candidates, or I'll test on 5.1.

> Also, since your fixes address the performance issues in BFQ, do you
> have any thoughts on whether they can be adapted to CFQ as well, to
> benefit the older stable kernels that still support CFQ?
> 

I have implanted my fixes on the existing throughput-boosting
infrastructure of BFQ.  CFQ doesn't have such an infrastructure.

If you need I/O control with older kernels, you may want to check my
version of BFQ for legacy block, named bfq-sq and available in this
repo:
https://github.com/Algodev-github/bfq-mq/

I'm willing to provide you with any information or help if needed.

Thanks,
Paolo

> Thank you!
> 
> Regards,
> Srivatsa
> VMware Photon OS

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