Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753876Ab0FZL4v (ORCPT ); Sat, 26 Jun 2010 07:56:51 -0400 Received: from verein.lst.de ([213.95.11.210]:43356 "EHLO verein.lst.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753137Ab0FZL4t (ORCPT ); Sat, 26 Jun 2010 07:56:49 -0400 Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:56:32 +0200 From: Christoph Hellwig To: Jens Axboe Cc: Vivek Goyal , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, czoccolo@gmail.com Subject: Re: trying to understand READ_META, READ_SYNC, WRITE_SYNC & co Message-ID: <20100626115632.GA31209@lst.de> References: <20100621110436.GA4056@lst.de> <4C1FB5F7.3070908@kernel.dk> <20100621191410.GA24213@lst.de> <20100621213618.GC6474@redhat.com> <20100623100138.GA9575@lst.de> <20100624014420.GB3297@redhat.com> <20100625110319.GA12855@lst.de> <20100626033509.GA2435@redhat.com> <20100626100526.GA27159@lst.de> <20100626112054.GA30661@kernel.dk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20100626112054.GA30661@kernel.dk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-Spam-Score: 0 () Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1143 Lines: 25 On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 01:20:55PM +0200, Jens Axboe wrote: > The whole idling/anticipation is all about knowing when to > stall the queue very briefly for sync io, allowing that single > sync stream to make good progress for a while before switching > to something else. This switching back and forth potentially > destroyes throughput for the O_DIRECT writer, especially for > disks with write through caching. > > Christoph, you seem not to agree on the concept of idling. I'm still trying to understand the use case. Basically CFQ gets worse results for any workload I'm looking at, be that from the filesystem developer point of view, or virtualization point of view. And it tends to get worse the more intelligence is added to CFQ. If we could actually narrow down what it's supposed to help with into useful benchmarks that can be trivially reproduced a lot of things would be easier. -- 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/