Re: A quick fio test (was Re: [patch 00/13] Syslets, "Threadlets", generic AIO support, v3)

Evgeniy Polyakov
2007-02-27T19:16:34Z

On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 07:45:41PM +0100, Jens Axboe (jens.axboe@oracle.com) wrote:
> > Deadline shows this:
> >
> > sync:
> > READ: io=1,024MiB, aggrb=38,212KiB/s, minb=38,212KiB/s,
> > maxb=38,212KiB/s, mint=28099msec, maxt=28099msec
> >
> > libaio:
> > READ: io=1,024MiB, aggrb=37,933KiB/s, minb=37,933KiB/s,
> > maxb=37,933KiB/s, mint=28306msec, maxt=28306msec
> >
> > syslet-rw:
> > READ: io=1,024MiB, aggrb=34,759KiB/s, minb=34,759KiB/s,
> > maxb=34,759KiB/s, mint=30891msec, maxt=30891msec
> >
> > There were about 10k async schedulings.
>
> I think the issue here is pretty simple - when fio gets a queue full
> like condition (it reaches the depth you set, 32), it commits them and
> starts queuing again. Since that'll likely block, it'll get issued by
> another process. So you suddenly have a nice sequence of reads from one
> process (pending, only one is actually committed since it's serialized),
> and then a read further down the line that goes behind those you already
> committed. Then result is seeky, where it should have been sequential.
>
> Do you get expected results if you set iodepth_low=1? That'll make fio
> drain the queue before building it up again, should get you a sequential
> access pattern with syslets.

With such a change results should be better - not only because seek is
removed with sequential read, but also number of working threads
decreases with time - until queue is filled again.

So, syslet-rw has increased to 37mb/sec out of 39/sync and 38/libaio,
the latter two did not changed.

With iodepth of 10k, I get the same performance for
libaio and syslets - about 36mb/sec, it does not depend on iodepth_low
being set to 1 or default (full).

So syslets have small problems with small number of iodepth - its
performance is about 34mb/sec and then increases to 36 with iodepth
grow. While libaio decreases from 38 down to 36 mb/sec.

iodepth_low=1 helps syslets to have 37mb/sec with iodepth=32, with 3200
and 10k it does not play any role.

> --
> Jens Axboe

--
Evgeniy Polyakov