Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754895AbZFYNpb (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:45:31 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751718AbZFYNpX (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:45:23 -0400 Received: from mailhost11.gawab.com ([66.220.20.11]:46242 "HELO info12.gawab.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1751160AbZFYNpX (ORCPT ); Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:45:23 -0400 X-Trusted: Whitelisted From: Al Boldi To: Jens Axboe Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] mm: stop balance_dirty_pages doing too much work Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:46:22 +0300 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 Cc: Peter Zijlstra , Andrew Morton , Richard Kennedy , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1245839904.3210.85.camel@localhost.localdomain> <200906251533.12925.a1426z@gawab.com> <20090625124342.GN31415@kernel.dk> In-Reply-To: <20090625124342.GN31415@kernel.dk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200906251646.22785.a1426z@gawab.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3532 Lines: 81 Jens Axboe wrote: > On Thu, Jun 25 2009, Al Boldi wrote: > > Jens Axboe wrote: > > > On Thu, Jun 25 2009, Jens Axboe wrote: > > > > On Thu, Jun 25 2009, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > > > > On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 15:27 -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > > > > On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:38:24 +0100 > > > > > > > > > > > > Richard Kennedy wrote: > > > > > > > When writing to 2 (or more) devices at the same time, stop > > > > > > > balance_dirty_pages moving dirty pages to writeback when it has > > > > > > > reached the bdi threshold. This prevents balance_dirty_pages > > > > > > > overshooting its limits and moving all dirty pages to > > > > > > > writeback. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Richard Kennedy > > > > > > > --- > > > > > > > > > > Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra > > > > > > > > After doing some integration and update work on the writeback branch, > > > > I threw 2.6.31-rc1, 2.6.31-rc1+patch, 2.6.31-rc1+writeback into the > > > > test mix. The writeback series include this patch as a prep patch. > > > > Results for the mmap write test case: > > > > > > > > Kernel Throughput usr sys ctx util > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > vanilla 184MB/sec 19.51% 50.49% 12995 82.88% > > > > vanilla 184MB/sec 19.60% 50.77% 12846 83.47% > > > > vanilla 182MB/sec 19.25% 51.18% 14692 82.76% > > > > vanilla+patch 169MB/sec 18.08% 43.61% 9507 76.38% > > > > vanilla+patch 170MB/sec 18.37% 43.46% 10275 76.62% > > > > vanilla+patch 165MB/sec 17.59% 42.06% 10165 74.39% > > > > writeback 215MB/sec 22.69% 53.23% 4085 92.32% > > > > writeback 214MB/sec 24.31% 52.90% 4495 92.40% > > > > writeback 208MB/sec 23.14% 52.12% 4067 91.68% > > > > > > > > To be perfectly clear: > > > > > > > > vanilla 2.6.31-rc1 stock > > > > vanilla+patch 2.6.31-rc1 + bdi_thresh patch > > > > writeback 2.6.31-rc1 + bdi_thresh patch + writeback series > > > > > > > > This is just a single spindle w/ext4, nothing fancy. I'll do a > > > > 3-series run with the writeback and this patch backed out, to see if > > > > it makes a difference here. I didn't do that initially, since the > > > > results were in the range that I expected. > > > > > > Results for writeback without the bdi_thresh patch > > > > > > Kernel Throughput usr sys ctx util > > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > > > wb-bdi_thresh 211MB/sec 22.71% 53.30% 4050 91.19% > > > wb-bdi_thresh 212MB/sec 22.78% 53.55% 4809 91.51% > > > wb-bdi_thresh 212MB/sec 22.99% 54.23% 4715 93.10% > > > > > > Not a lot of difference there, without more than three runs it's hard > > > to say what is significant. Could be a small decrease in throughput, if > > > the 208MB/sec results from above is an outlier (I think it is, > > > ~215MB/sec is usually the most consistent result). > > > > What's the iowait on these runs? > > Not sure, I didn't check. Why do you ask? iowait gives you an indication of seekactivity. Thanks! -- Al -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/