From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Subject: Re: [PATCH 6/6] writeback: throttle buffered writeback To: Jeff Moyer References: <1458669320-6819-1-git-send-email-axboe@fb.com> <1458669320-6819-7-git-send-email-axboe@fb.com> CC: , , From: Jens Axboe Message-ID: <56F1A8D0.4060403@fb.com> Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:19:28 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 03/22/2016 02:12 PM, Jeff Moyer wrote: > Hi, Jens, > > Jens Axboe writes: > >> If the device has write back caching, 'wb_cache_delay' delays by >> this amount of usecs when a write completes before allowing more. > > What's the reason behind that? For classic write back caching, the cache can absorb a bunch of writes shortly, which means that the completion cost only shows a small part of the overall cost. This means that if we just throttle on completion, then when the device starts committing to media, then we'll end up starving other IO anyway. This knob is a way to attempt to tame that. -- Jens Axboe