Holding the vblk->lock across kick causes poor scalability in SMP guests. If one CPU is doing virtqueue kick and another CPU touches the vblk->lock it will have to spin until virtqueue kick completes. This patch reduces system% CPU utilization in SMP guests that are running multithreaded I/O-bound workloads. The improvements are small but show as iops and SMP are increased. Khoa Huynh <khoa@xxxxxxxxxx> provided initial performance data that indicates this optimization is worthwhile at high iops. Asias He <asias@xxxxxxxxxx> reports the following fio results: Host: Linux 3.4.0+ #302 SMP x86_64 GNU/Linux Guest: same as host kernel Average 3 runs: with locked kick read iops=119907.50 bw=59954.00 runt=35018.50 io=2048.00 write iops=217187.00 bw=108594.00 runt=19312.00 io=2048.00 read iops=33948.00 bw=16974.50 runt=186820.50 io=3095.70 write iops=35014.00 bw=17507.50 runt=181151.00 io=3095.70 clat (usec) max=3484.10 avg=121085.38 stdev=174416.11 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=3438.30 avg=59863.35 stdev=116607.69 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=3745.65 avg=454501.30 stdev=332699.00 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=4089.75 avg=442374.99 stdev=304874.62 min=0.00 cpu sys=615.12 majf=24080.50 ctx=64253616.50 usr=68.08 minf=17907363.00 cpu sys=1235.95 majf=23389.00 ctx=59788148.00 usr=98.34 minf=20020008.50 cpu sys=764.96 majf=28414.00 ctx=848279274.00 usr=36.39 minf=19737254.00 cpu sys=714.13 majf=21853.50 ctx=854608972.00 usr=33.56 minf=18256760.50 with unlocked kick read iops=118559.00 bw=59279.66 runt=35400.66 io=2048.00 write iops=227560.00 bw=113780.33 runt=18440.00 io=2048.00 read iops=34567.66 bw=17284.00 runt=183497.33 io=3095.70 write iops=34589.33 bw=17295.00 runt=183355.00 io=3095.70 clat (usec) max=3485.56 avg=121989.58 stdev=197355.15 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=3222.33 avg=57784.11 stdev=141002.89 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=4060.93 avg=447098.65 stdev=315734.33 min=0.00 clat (usec) max=3656.30 avg=447281.70 stdev=314051.33 min=0.00 cpu sys=683.78 majf=24501.33 ctx=64435364.66 usr=68.91 minf=17907893.33 cpu sys=1218.24 majf=25000.33 ctx=60451475.00 usr=101.04 minf=19757720.00 cpu sys=740.39 majf=24809.00 ctx=845290443.66 usr=37.25 minf=19349958.33 cpu sys=723.63 majf=27597.33 ctx=850199927.33 usr=35.35 minf=19092343.00 FIO config file: [global] exec_prerun="echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches" group_reporting norandommap ioscheduler=noop thread bs=512 size=4MB direct=1 filename=/dev/vdb numjobs=256 ioengine=aio iodepth=64 loops=3 Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Other block drivers (cciss, rbd, nbd) use spin_unlock_irq() so I followed that. To me this seems wrong: blk_run_queue() uses spin_lock_irqsave() but we enable irqs with spin_unlock_irq(). If the caller of blk_run_queue() had irqs disabled and we enable them again this could be a problem, right? Can someone more familiar with kernel locking comment? drivers/block/virtio_blk.c | 10 ++++++++-- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c b/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c index 774c31d..d674977 100644 --- a/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c +++ b/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c @@ -199,8 +199,14 @@ static void do_virtblk_request(struct request_queue *q) issued++; } - if (issued) - virtqueue_kick(vblk->vq); + if (!issued) + return; + + if (virtqueue_kick_prepare(vblk->vq)) { + spin_unlock_irq(vblk->disk->queue->queue_lock); + virtqueue_notify(vblk->vq); + spin_lock_irq(vblk->disk->queue->queue_lock); + } } /* return id (s/n) string for *disk to *id_str -- 1.7.10 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html