md: introduce get_priority_stripe() to improve raid456 write performance

Improve write performance by preventing the delayed_list from dumping all its
stripes onto the handle_list in one shot.  Delayed stripes are now further
delayed by being held on the 'hold_list'.  The 'hold_list' is bypassed when:

  * a STRIPE_IO_STARTED stripe is found at the head of 'handle_list'
  * 'handle_list' is empty and i/o is being done to satisfy full stripe-width
    write requests
  * 'bypass_count' is less than 'bypass_threshold'.  By default the threshold
    is 1, i.e. every other stripe handled is a preread stripe provided the
    top two conditions are false.

Benchmark data:
System: 2x Xeon 5150, 4x SATA, mem=1GB
Baseline: 2.6.24-rc7
Configuration: mdadm --create /dev/md0 /dev/sd[b-e] -n 4 -l 5 --assume-clean
Test1: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/md0 bs=1024k count=2048
  * patched:  +33% (stripe_cache_size = 256), +25% (stripe_cache_size = 512)

Test2: tiobench --size 2048 --numruns 5 --block 4096 --block 131072 (XFS)
  * patched: +13%
  * patched + preread_bypass_threshold = 0: +37%

Changes since v1:
* reduce bypass_threshold from (chunk_size / sectors_per_chunk) to (1) and
  make it configurable.  This defaults to fairness and modest performance
  gains out of the box.
Changes since v2:
* [neilb@suse.de]: kill STRIPE_PRIO_HI and preread_needed as they are not
  necessary, the important change was clearing STRIPE_DELAYED in
  add_stripe_bio and this has been moved out to make_request for the hang
  fix.
* [neilb@suse.de]: simplify get_priority_stripe
* [dan.j.williams@intel.com]: reset the bypass_count when ->hold_list is
  sampled empty (+11%)
* [dan.j.williams@intel.com]: decrement the bypass_count at the detection
  of stripes being naturally promoted off of hold_list +2%.  Note, resetting
  bypass_count instead of decrementing on these events yields +4% but that is
  probably too aggressive.
Changes since v3:
* cosmetic fixups

Tested-by: James W. Laferriere <babydr@baby-dragons.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/md.txt b/Documentation/md.txt
index 396cdd9..a8b4306 100644
--- a/Documentation/md.txt
+++ b/Documentation/md.txt
@@ -450,3 +450,9 @@ These currently include
       there are upper and lower limits (32768, 16).  Default is 128.
   strip_cache_active (currently raid5 only)
       number of active entries in the stripe cache
+  preread_bypass_threshold (currently raid5 only)
+      number of times a stripe requiring preread will be bypassed by
+      a stripe that does not require preread.  For fairness defaults
+      to 1.  Setting this to 0 disables bypass accounting and
+      requires preread stripes to wait until all full-width stripe-
+      writes are complete.  Valid values are 0 to stripe_cache_size.