From: Kuan-Wei Chiu <visitorckw@gmail.com>
To: corbet@lwn.net, colyli@kernel.org, kent.overstreet@linux.dev,
akpm@linux-foundation.org, robertpang@google.com
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
linux-bcache@vger.kernel.org, jserv@ccns.ncku.edu.tw,
Kuan-Wei Chiu <visitorckw@gmail.com>,
stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH 7/8] Documentation/core-api: min_heap: Document _eqaware variants of min-heap APIs
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2025 05:55:15 +0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20250610215516.1513296-8-visitorckw@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20250610215516.1513296-1-visitorckw@gmail.com>
Add documentation for equality-aware variants of min-heap maintenance
functions, which use a top-down sift_down strategy. These variants,
suffixed with _eqaware, reduce the number of comparisons to O(1) in
workloads with many elements of equal priority and can be used as
drop-in replacements for their standard counterparts.
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # 6.11+
Signed-off-by: Kuan-Wei Chiu <visitorckw@gmail.com>
---
Documentation/core-api/min_heap.rst | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 20 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/min_heap.rst b/Documentation/core-api/min_heap.rst
index 9f57766581df..012c82038b46 100644
--- a/Documentation/core-api/min_heap.rst
+++ b/Documentation/core-api/min_heap.rst
@@ -30,6 +30,26 @@ more expensive. As with the non-inline versions, it is important to use the
macro wrappers for inline functions instead of directly calling the functions
themselves.
+Equality-Aware Heap Maintenance
+-------------------------------
+
+In some workloads, a large number of elements in the heap may be equal under
+the user-defined comparison function. For such cases, the standard
+``min_heap_sift_down()`` implementation, which uses the bottom-up heapify
+strategy, can be inefficient. While bottom-up heapify reduces the number of
+comparisons by approximately 50% for randomly ordered data, it may perform up
+to :math:`2 \times \log_2(n)` comparisons in the presence of many equal
+elements.
+
+To address this, equality-aware versions of heap maintenance APIs are provided.
+These versions use the traditional top-down heapify strategy, which performs
+better - sometimes requiring only :math:`\mathcal{O}(1)` comparisons - when
+many elements are equal.
+
+The equality-aware APIs are suffixed with ``_eqaware``, and serve as drop-in
+replacements for their standard counterparts when equal elements are expected.
+
+
Data Structures
===============
--
2.34.1
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2025-06-10 21:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-06-10 21:55 [PATCH 0/8] Fix bcache regression with equality-aware heap APIs Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 1/8] lib min_heap: Add equal-elements-aware sift_down variant Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-12 13:00 ` Robert Pang
2025-06-13 6:17 ` Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 2/8] lib min_heap: Add typedef for sift_down function pointer Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 3/8] lib min_heap: add eqaware variant of min_heapify_all() Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 4/8] lib min_heap: add eqaware variant of min_heap_pop() Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 5/8] lib min_heap: add eqaware variant of min_heap_pop_push() Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 6/8] lib min_heap: add eqaware variant of min_heap_del() Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-10 21:55 ` Kuan-Wei Chiu [this message]
2025-06-10 21:55 ` [PATCH 8/8] bcache: Fix the tail IO latency regression by using equality-aware min heap API Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-12 1:48 ` [PATCH 0/8] Fix bcache regression with equality-aware heap APIs Andrew Morton
2025-06-12 1:54 ` Andrew Morton
2025-06-13 6:15 ` Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-13 14:26 ` Robert Pang
2025-06-13 18:04 ` Andrew Morton
2025-06-13 23:19 ` Kuan-Wei Chiu
2025-06-14 1:31 ` Andrew Morton
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