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From: "Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@kernel.org>
To: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>, linux-xfs@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/8] xfs: separate CIL commit record IO
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 18:48:28 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210226024828.GN7272@magnolia> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YDdhJ0Oe6R+UXqDU@infradead.org>

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 09:34:47AM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 08:44:17AM +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > > Also, do you have any idea what was Christoph talking about wrt devices
> > > with no-op flushes the last time this patch was posted?  This change
> > > seems straightforward to me (assuming the answers to my two question are
> > > 'yes') but I didn't grok what subtlety he was alluding to...?
> > 
> > He was wondering what devices benefited from this. It has no impact
> > on highspeed devices that do not require flushes/FUA (e.g. high end
> > intel optane SSDs) but those are not the devices this change is
> > aimed at. There are no regressions on these high end devices,
> > either, so they are largely irrelevant to the patch and what it
> > targets...
> 
> I don't think it is that simple.  Pretty much every device aimed at
> enterprise use does not enable a volatile write cache by default.  That
> also includes hard drives, arrays and NAND based SSDs.
> 
> Especially for hard drives (or slower arrays) the actual I/O wait might
> matter.  What is the argument against making this conditional?

I still don't understand what you're asking about here --

AFAICT the net effect of this patchset is that it reduces the number of
preflushes and FUA log writes.  To my knowledge, on a high end device
with no volatile write cache, flushes are a no-op (because all writes
are persisted somewhere immediately) and a FUA write should be the exact
same thing as a non-FUA write.  Because XFS will now issue fewer no-op
persistence commands to the device, there should be no effect at all.

In contrast, a dumb stone tablet with a write cache hooked up to SATA
will have agonizingly slow cache flushes.  XFS will issue fewer
persistence commands to the rock, which in turn makes things faster
because we're calling the engravers less often.

What am I missing here?  Are you saying that the cost of a cache flush
goes up much faster than the amount of data that has to be flushed?

--D

  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-02-26  2:49 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 59+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-02-23  3:34 [PATCH v2] xfs: various log stuff Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 1/8] xfs: log stripe roundoff is a property of the log Dave Chinner
2021-02-23 10:29   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:14   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-25  8:32   ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-03-01 15:13   ` Brian Foster
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 2/8] xfs: separate CIL commit record IO Dave Chinner
2021-02-23 12:12   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:34   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-24 21:44     ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-24 23:06       ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-25  8:34       ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-02-25 20:47         ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-01  9:09           ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-03-03  0:11             ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-26  2:48         ` Darrick J. Wong [this message]
2021-02-28 16:36           ` Brian Foster
2021-02-28 23:46             ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-01 15:33               ` Brian Foster
2021-03-01 15:19   ` Brian Foster
2021-03-03  0:41     ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-03 15:22       ` Brian Foster
2021-03-04 22:57         ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-05  0:44       ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 3/8] xfs: move and rename xfs_blkdev_issue_flush Dave Chinner
2021-02-23 12:57   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:45   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-24 22:01     ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-25  8:36   ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 4/8] xfs: async blkdev cache flush Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  5:29   ` Chaitanya Kulkarni
2021-02-23 14:02   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:51   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 5/8] xfs: CIL checkpoint flushes caches unconditionally Dave Chinner
2021-02-24  7:16   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:57   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-25  8:42   ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-02-25 21:07     ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 6/8] xfs: remove need_start_rec parameter from xlog_write() Dave Chinner
2021-02-24  7:17   ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:59   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-25  8:49   ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-02-25 20:55     ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 7/8] xfs: journal IO cache flush reductions Dave Chinner
2021-02-23  8:05   ` [PATCH 7/8 v2] " Dave Chinner
2021-02-24 12:27     ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-24 20:32       ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-24 21:13     ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-24 22:03       ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-25  4:09     ` Chandan Babu R
2021-02-25  7:13       ` Chandan Babu R
2021-03-01  5:44       ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-01  5:56         ` Dave Chinner
2021-02-25  8:58     ` Christoph Hellwig
2021-02-25 21:06       ` Dave Chinner
2021-03-01 19:29     ` Brian Foster
2021-02-23  3:34 ` [PATCH 8/8] xfs: Fix CIL throttle hang when CIL space used going backwards Dave Chinner
2021-02-24 21:18   ` Darrick J. Wong
2021-02-24 22:05     ` Dave Chinner

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