Hi Nick,
On Thu, 2010-07-22 at 13:19 +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
> > out:
> > spin_unlock(&inode_lock);
> > +
> > + if (wakeup_bdi) {
> > + spin_lock(&bdi->wb_lock);
> > + if (!bdi->wb.task)
> > + wake_up_process(default_backing_dev_info.wb.task);
> > + else
> > + wake_up_process(bdi->wb.task);
> > + spin_unlock(&bdi->wb_lock);
> > + }
> > }
>
> We really want to wake up the bdi right away when first dirtying
> the inode? I haven't looked at where the state of the bdi code is
> now, but isn't it better to have a a delay there?
Yes, I guess we want to wake up the bdi thread after 5 secs (assuming
default settings). I could implement a "wake_up_process_delayed"
function which would use a timer, but I think it is not necessary to
introduce these complications. We can just wake-up the bdi thread, it'll
find out there is nothing to do, and will go sleep for 5 secs. I think
this is good enough.
IOW, delayed wake-up is not worth the trouble.
> And rather than spreading details of how bdi tasks are managed
> would you consider putting this into its own function?
Sure, will do.
> Other than that, I like your patches.
Thanks :-)
> Out of interest, is 5 seconds
> very detremental to power usage? What is a reasonable goal for
> wakeups? (eg. 95%+ of possible efficiency)
I cannot tell for sure. In Nokia N900 phone we use OMAP3 and we have
dynamic OFF-mode, so we switch off the CPU and peripherals completely
when there is nothing to do, and SDRAM stays in low-power auto-refresh
mode. Every useless wake-up makes us do a lot of job re-constructing the
CPU state. I cannot tell the numbers, but I'm CCing Tero, who is working
on OMAP3 PM and makes a lot of battery current measurements, he can
provide some numbers.
--
Best Regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Артём Битюцкий)
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