Re: [RFC 0/5] implement asynchronous BLKDISCARD via io_uring

Jens Axboe
2024-08-15T15:50:19Z

On 8/14/24 4:45 AM, Pavel Begunkov wrote:
> There is an interest in having asynchronous block operations like
> discard. The patch set implements that as io_uring commands, which is
> an io_uring request type allowing to implement custom file specific
> operations.
>
> First 4 patches are simple preps, and the main part is in Patch 5.
> Not tested with a real drive yet, hence sending as an RFC.
>
> I'm also going to add BLKDISCARDZEROES and BLKSECDISCARD, which should
> reuse structures and helpers from Patch 5.
>
> liburing tests for reference:
>
> https://github.com/isilence/liburing.git discard-cmd-test

FWIW, did a quick patch to wire it up for fio. Using this
job file:

[trim]
filename=/dev/nvme31n1
ioengine=io_uring
iodepth=64
rw=randtrim
norandommap
bs=4k

the stock kernel gets:

trim: IOPS=21.6k, BW=84.4MiB/s (88.5MB/s)(847MiB/10036msec); 0 zone resets

using ~5% CPU, and with the process predictably stuck in D state all of
the time, waiting on a sync trim.

With the patches:

trim: IOPS=75.8k, BW=296MiB/s (310MB/s)(2653MiB/8961msec); 0 zone resets

using ~11% CPU.

Didn't verify actual functionality, but did check trims are going up and
down. Drive used is:

Dell NVMe PM1743 RI E3.S 7.68TB

Outside of async trim being useful for actual workloads rather than the
sync trim we have now, it'll also help characterizing real world mixed
workloads that have trims with reads/writes.

--
Jens Axboe