Re: dm-crypt performance regression due to workqueue changes

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Hello,

On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 08:15:56PM +0200, Mikulas Patocka wrote:
> With 6.5, we get 3600MiB/s; with 6.6 we get 1400MiB/s.
> 
> The reason is that virt-manager by default sets up a topology where we 
> have 16 sockets, 1 core per socket, 1 thread per core. And that workqueue 
> patch avoids moving work items across sockets, so it processes all 
> encryption work only on one virtual CPU.
> 
> The performance degradation may be fixed with "echo 'system'
> >/sys/module/workqueue/parameters/default_affinity_scope" - but it is 
> regression anyway, as many users don't know about this option.
> 
> How should we fix it? There are several options:
> 1. revert back to 'numa' affinity
> 2. revert to 'numa' affinity only if we are in a virtual machine
> 3. hack dm-crypt to set the 'numa' affinity for the affected workqueues
> 4. any other solution?

Do you happen to know why libvirt is doing that? There are many other
implications to configuring the system that way and I don't think we want to
design kernel behaviors to suit topology information fed to VMs which can be
arbitrary.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun