Re: [PATCH 2/2] io_uring: Split io_issue_def struct

Jens Axboe
2023-01-16T13:58:18Z

On 1/16/23 3:52 AM, Breno Leitao wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 05:35:22PM -0300, Gabriel Krisman Bertazi wrote:
>> Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org> writes:
>>
>>> This patch removes some "cold" fields from `struct io_issue_def`.
>>>
>>> The plan is to keep only highly used fields into `struct io_issue_def`, so,
>>> it may be hot in the cache. The hot fields are basically all the bitfields
>>> and the callback functions for .issue and .prep.
>>>
>>> The other less frequently used fields are now located in a secondary and
>>> cold struct, called `io_cold_def`.
>>>
>>> This is the size for the structs:
>>>
>>> Before: io_issue_def = 56 bytes
>>> After: io_issue_def = 24 bytes; io_cold_def = 40 bytes
>>
>> Does this change have an observable impact in run time? Did it show
>> a significant decrease of dcache misses?
>
> I haven't tested it. I expect it might be hard to came up with such test.
>
> A possible test might be running io_uring heavy tests, while adding
> enough memory pressure. Doing this in two different instant (A/B test),
> might be a unpredicable and the error deviation might hide the benefit.

I think what you'd want is two (or more) io_uring ops being really
busy and measuring dcache pressure while running that test. I don't
think this is very feasible to accurately measure, and I also don't
think that is an issue. The split into hot/cold parts of the op
definitions is obviously a good idea. For ideal setups, we'll never
be using the cold part at all, and having a smaller op definition
for the fast path is always going to be helpful.

--
Jens Axboe