Re: [PATCH] speed up SATA

Jeff Garzik
2004-03-28T17:41:56Z

Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 27 2004, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
>>Nick Piggin wrote:
>>
>>>I think 32MB is too much. You incur latency and lose
>>>scheduling grainularity. I bet returns start diminishing
>>>pretty quickly after 1MB or so.
>>
>>See my reply to Bart.
>>
>>Also, it is not the driver's responsibility to do anything but export
>>the hardware maximums.
>
>
> The problem is that what the 'reasonable size' is depends highly on the
> hardware. The 32MB doesn't make any sense to me for SATA (or for
> anything else, for that matter). Back-to-back 1MB requests (this is the
> default I chose for PATA) should be practially identical for throughput,
> and loads better for optimizing latencies. You cannot do much with 32MB
> requests wrt latency...
>
> So you could change ->max_sectors to be 'max allowable io, hardware
> limitation' and add ->optimal_sectors to be 'best sized io'. I don't see
> tha it buys you anything, since you'd be going for optimal_sectors all
> the time anyways.
>
> Additionally, a single bio cannot currently be bigger than 256 pages
> (ie 1MB request on 4k page). This _could_ be increased of course, but
> not beyond making ->bio_io_vec be bigger than a page. It's already
> bigger than that on x86 in fact, if you use 64-bit dma_addr_t. For
> 32-bit dma_addr_t 256 entries fit a page perfectly. Merging can get you
> bigger requests of course.
>
> In summary, there needs to be some extremely good numbers and arguments
> for changing any of this, so far I don't see anything except people
> drooling over sending 32MB requests.

I think you're way too stuck on the 32MB number. Other limitations
already limit that further.

If and when the upper layers pass down such requests, my driver can
handle that. For today, various external limitations and factors --
such as what you describe above -- mean the driver won't be getting
anywhere near 32MB requests. And my driver can handle that just fine too.

Jeff