Re: tiobench read 50% regression with 2.6.30-rc1

[Jeff Moyer <jmoyer@redhat.com>]

Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> writes:

> On Wed, Apr 15 2009, Jeff Moyer wrote:
>> I tested this using iozone to read a file from an NFS client.  The
>> iozone command line was:
>>   iozone -s 2000000 -r 64 -f /mnt/test/testfile -i 1 -w
>> 
>> The numbers in the nfsd's row represent the number of nfsd threads.  I
>> included numbers for the deadline scheduler as well for comparison.
>> 
>>                v2.6.29
>> 
>> nfsd's  |   1    |  2   |   4   |   8
>> --------+---------------+-------+------
>> cfq     | 91356 | 66391 | 61942 | 51674
>> deadline| 43207 | 67436 | 96289 | 107784
>> 
>>               2.6.30-rc1
>> 
>> nfsd's  |   1   |   2   |   4   |   8
>> --------+---------------+-------+------
>> cfq     | 43127 | 22354 | 20858 | 21179
>> deadline| 43732 | 68059 | 76659 | 83231
>> 
>>           2.6.30-rc1 + cfq fix
>> 
>> nfsd's  |   1    |    2   |   4   |   8
>> --------+-----------------+-------+------
>> cfq     | 114602 | 102280 | 43479 | 43160
>> 
>> As you can see, for 1 and 2 threads, the patch *really* helps out.  We
>> still don't get back the performance for 4 and 8 nfsd threads, though.
>> It's interesting to note that the deadline scheduler regresses for 4 and
>> 8 threads, as well.  I think we've still got some digging to do.
>
> Wow, that does indeed look pretty good!

Please don't lose the later part of the message, which is that both CFQ
and deadline regress for 4 and 8 threads when moving from 2.6.29 to
2.6.30-rc1!  There have been way too many changes to keep track of in
this area recently, and I'd like to get some confidence that we
understand the performance implications of them.

>> I'll try the cfq close cooperator patches next.
>
> I have a pending update on the coop patch that isn't pushed out yet, I
> hope to have it finalized and tested later today. Hopefully, with that,
> we should be able to maintain > 100Mb/sec for 4 and 8 threads.

OK, please let me know when and where this is available and I'll give it
a try.

Cheers,
Jeff