Re: [PATCH] cfq-iosched: reduce write depth only if sync was delayed

[Corrado Zoccolo <czoccolo@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 8:05 PM, Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 09 2009, Jeff Moyer wrote:
>> OK.  Can we put a comment in there and change the initialization to
>> cfq_slice_sync * 10?
>
> Agree, that would be MUCH easier to understand.
>
Sure, we can put a comment there, but I don't like hardcoding a constant that depends on how the formula is computed (what if the formula is changed, 
and it doesn't depend on cfq_slice_sync any more, or if cfq_slice_sync changes dynamically?).
When I wrote it, what I really meant was exactly what you read in the C code (assume the last delayed sync happened 1 second ago). Then, the effect 
would be to start with a queue depth of 10 with the current formula, but even if we change the formula, 1 second is still meaningful (while 10 
*cfq_slice_sync, that has the same value, becomes misleading). So my proposed fix is just:

>From f06cd83b45b3a7ee13ae7322197b610085dc70dd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Corrado Zoccolo <corrado@localhost.(none)>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 20:40:16 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] cfq-iosched: commenting non-obvious initialization

Added a comment to explain the initialization of last_delayed_sync.

Signed-off-by: Corrado Zoccolo <czoccolo@gmail.com>
---
 block/cfq-iosched.c |    4 ++++
 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/block/cfq-iosched.c b/block/cfq-iosched.c
index 98b15b9..69ecee7 100644
--- a/block/cfq-iosched.c
+++ b/block/cfq-iosched.c
@@ -3759,6 +3759,10 @@ static void *cfq_init_queue(struct request_queue *q)
 	cfqd->cfq_latency = 1;
 	cfqd->cfq_group_isolation = 0;
 	cfqd->hw_tag = -1;
+	/*
+	 * we optimistically start assuming sync ops weren't delayed in last
+	 * second, in order to have larger depth for async operations.
+	 */
 	cfqd->last_delayed_sync = jiffies - HZ;
 	INIT_RCU_HEAD(&cfqd->rcu);
 	return cfqd;
-- 
1.6.2.5