Request-based DM's blk-mq support (dm-mq) was reported to be 50% slower than if an underlying null_blk device were used directly. One of the reasons for this drop in performance is that blk_insert_clone_request() was calling blk_mq_insert_request() with @async=true. This forced the use of kblockd_schedule_delayed_work_on() to run the blk-mq hw queues which ushered in ping-ponging between process context (fio in this case) and kblockd's kworker to submit the cloned request. The ftrace function_graph tracer showed: kworker-2013 => fio-12190 fio-12190 => kworker-2013 ... kworker-2013 => fio-12190 fio-12190 => kworker-2013 ... Fixing blk_insert_clone_request()'s blk_mq_insert_request() call to _not_ use kblockd to submit the cloned requests isn't enough to eliminate the observed context switches. In addition to this dm-mq specific blk-core fix, there are 2 DM core fixes to dm-mq that (when paired with the blk-core fix) completely eliminate the observed context switching: 1) don't blk_mq_run_hw_queues in blk-mq request completion Motivated by desire to reduce overhead of dm-mq, punting to kblockd just increases context switches. In my testing against a really fast null_blk device there was no benefit to running blk_mq_run_hw_queues() on completion (and no other blk-mq driver does this). So hopefully this change doesn't induce the need for yet another revert like commit 621739b00e16ca2d ! 2) use blk_mq_complete_request() in dm_complete_request() blk_complete_request() doesn't offer the traditional q->mq_ops vs .request_fn branching pattern that other historic block interfaces do (e.g. blk_get_request). Using blk_mq_complete_request() for blk-mq requests is important for performance. It should be noted that, like blk_complete_request(), blk_mq_complete_request() doesn't natively handle partial completions -- but the request-based DM-multipath target does provide the required partial completion support by dm.c:end_clone_bio() triggering requeueing of the request via dm-mpath.c:multipath_end_io()'s return of DM_ENDIO_REQUEUE. dm-mq fix #2 is _much_ more important than #1 for eliminating the context switches. Before: cpu : usr=15.10%, sys=59.39%, ctx=7905181, majf=0, minf=475 After: cpu : usr=20.60%, sys=79.35%, ctx=2008, majf=0, minf=472 With these changes multithreaded async read IOPs improved from ~950K to ~1350K for this dm-mq stacked on null_blk test-case. The raw read IOPs of the underlying null_blk device for the same workload is ~1950K. Fixes: 7fb4898e0 ("block: add blk-mq support to blk_insert_cloned_request()") Fixes: bfebd1cdb ("dm: add full blk-mq support to request-based DM") Reported-by: Sagi Grimberg <sagig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Mike Snitzer <snitzer@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx # 4.1+ --- block/blk-core.c | 2 +- drivers/md/dm.c | 13 ++++++------- 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-) diff --git a/block/blk-core.c b/block/blk-core.c index ab51685..c60e233 100644 --- a/block/blk-core.c +++ b/block/blk-core.c @@ -2198,7 +2198,7 @@ int blk_insert_cloned_request(struct request_queue *q, struct request *rq) if (q->mq_ops) { if (blk_queue_io_stat(q)) blk_account_io_start(rq, true); - blk_mq_insert_request(rq, false, true, true); + blk_mq_insert_request(rq, false, true, false); return 0; } diff --git a/drivers/md/dm.c b/drivers/md/dm.c index 5df4048..846e1bb 100644 --- a/drivers/md/dm.c +++ b/drivers/md/dm.c @@ -1109,12 +1109,8 @@ static void rq_completed(struct mapped_device *md, int rw, bool run_queue) * back into ->request_fn() could deadlock attempting to grab the * queue lock again. */ - if (run_queue) { - if (md->queue->mq_ops) - blk_mq_run_hw_queues(md->queue, true); - else - blk_run_queue_async(md->queue); - } + if (!md->queue->mq_ops && run_queue) + blk_run_queue_async(md->queue); /* * dm_put() must be at the end of this function. See the comment above @@ -1334,7 +1330,10 @@ static void dm_complete_request(struct request *rq, int error) struct dm_rq_target_io *tio = tio_from_request(rq); tio->error = error; - blk_complete_request(rq); + if (!rq->q->mq_ops) + blk_complete_request(rq); + else + blk_mq_complete_request(rq, rq->errors); } /* -- 2.5.4 (Apple Git-61) -- dm-devel mailing list dm-devel@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/dm-devel