Re: [PATCH RFC - TAKE TWO - 00/12] New version of the BFQ I/O Scheduler

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Hello, Jens.

On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 11:32:05AM -0600, Jens Axboe wrote:
> For things like blkcg, I agree, it should be able to be common code and
> reusable. But there's a need for scheduling beyond that, for people that
> don't use control groups (ie most...). And it'd be hard to retrofit cfq
> into blk-mq, without rewriting it. I don't believe we need anything this
> fancy for blk-mq, hopefully. At least having simple deadline scheduling
> would be Good Enough for the foreseeable future.

Heh, looks like we're miscommunicating.  I don't think anything with
the level of complexity of cfq is realistic for high-iops devices.  It
has already become a liability for SATA ssds after all.  My suggestion
is that as hierarchical scheduling tends to be logical extension of
flat scheduling, it probably would make sense to implement both
scheduling logics in the same framework as in the cpu scheduler or (to
a lesser extent) cfq.  So, a new blk-mq scheduler which can work in
hierarchical mode if blkcg is in active use.

One part I was wondering about is whether we'd need to continue the
modular multiple implementation mechanism.  For rotating disks, for
various reasons including some historical ones, we ended up with
multiple ioscheds and somewhat uglily layered blkcg implementations.
Given that the expected characteristics of blk-mq devices are more
consistent, it could be reasonable to stick with single iops and/or
bandwidth scheme.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun