Re: [PATCH] block: add max_dispatch to sysfs

[Damien Le Moal <dlemoal@kernel.org>]

On 4/10/24 22:17, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On 4/10/24 4:18 AM, Dongliang Cui wrote:
>> The default configuration in the current code is that when the device
>> is not busy, a single dispatch will attempt to pull 'nr_requests'
>> requests out of the schedule queue.
>>
>> I tried to track the dispatch process:
>>
>> COMM            TYPE    SEC_START       IOPRIO       INDEX
>> fio-17304       R	196798040	0x2005	     0
>> fio-17306       R	197060504	0x2005	     1
>> fio-17307       R	197346904	0x2005	     2
>> fio-17308       R	197609400	0x2005	     3
>> fio-17309       R	197873048	0x2005	     4
>> fio-17310       R	198134936	0x2005	     5
>> ...
>> fio-17237       R	197122936	  0x0	    57
>> fio-17238       R	197384984	  0x0	    58
>> <...>-17239     R	197647128	  0x0	    59
>> fio-17240       R	197909208	  0x0	    60
>> fio-17241       R	198171320	  0x0	    61
>> fio-17242       R	198433432	  0x0	    62
>> fio-17300       R	195744088	0x2005	     0
>> fio-17301       R	196008504	0x2005	     0
>>
>> The above data is calculated based on the block event trace, with each
>> column containing: process name, request type, sector start address,
>> IO priority.
>>
>> The INDEX represents the order in which the requests are extracted from
>> the scheduler queue during a single dispatch process.
>>
>> Some low-speed devices cannot process these requests at once, and they will
>> be requeued to hctx->dispatch and wait for the next issuance.
>>
>> There will be a problem here, when the IO priority is enabled, if you try
>> to dispatch "nr_request" requests at once, the IO priority will be ignored
>> from the scheduler queue and all requests will be extracted.
>>
>> In this scenario, if a high priority request is inserted into the scheduler
>> queue, it needs to wait for the low priority request in the hctx->dispatch
>> to be processed first.
>>
>> --------------------dispatch 1st----------------------
>> fio-17241       R       198171320         0x0       61
>> fio-17242       R       198433432         0x0       62
>> --------------------dispatch 2nd----------------------
>> fio-17300       R       195744088       0x2005       0
>>
>> In certain scenarios, we hope that requests can be processed in order of io
>> priority as much as possible.
>>
>> Maybe max_dispatch should not be a fixed value, but can be adjusted
>> according to device conditions.
>>
>> So we give a interface to control the maximum value of single dispatch
>> so that users can configure it according to devices characteristics.
> 
> I agree that pulling 'nr_requests' out of the scheduler will kind of
> defeat the purpose of the scheduler to some extent. But rather than add
> another knob that nobody knows about or ever will touch (and extra queue
> variables that just take up space), why not just default to something a
> bit saner? Eg we could default to 1/8 or 1/4 of the scheduler depth
> instead.

Why not default to pulling what can actually be executed, that is, up to the
number of free hw tags / budget ? Anything more than that will be requeued anyway.

-- 
Damien Le Moal
Western Digital Research