Re: Approaches to making io_submit not block

Jeremy Allison
2011-08-30T23:12:53Z

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 03:54:38PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> Also, glibc has userspace for POSIX AIO. A successful kernel-based
> implementation would result in glibc migrating away from its current
> implementation. So we should work with the glibc developers on ensuring
> that the migration can happen.

Unfortunately the glibc userspace POSIX AIO limits asynchronicity to
one outstanding request per file descriptor. From aio_misc.c in glibc:

if (runp != NULL
&& runp->aiocbp->aiocb.aio_fildes == aiocbp->aiocb.aio_fildes)
{
/* The current file descriptor is worked on. It makes no sense
to start another thread since this new thread would fight
with the running thread for the resources. But we also cannot
say that the thread processing this desriptor shall immediately
after finishing the current job process this request if there
are other threads in the running queue which have a higher
priority. */

/* Simply enqueue it after the running one according to the
priority. */

I have often wondered if this is actually the case ? I created
my own glibc with a patches AIO that removed this restriction
(thus had multiple outstanding threads on a single fd). In testing
I saw a dramatic increase in performance (2x speedup) but then
testing with use in actual code (Samba smbd) it made the client
throughput *worse*. I never got to the bottom of this and so
didn't submit my fixes to glibc.

Any ideas if this is still the case ? Or comments on why glibc
insists on only one outstanding request per fd ? Is this really
needed for kernel performance ?

Jeremy.