On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 08:48:06AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote: > On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 3:17 AM, Dave Chinner <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 11:38:16PM -0800, Howard Chu wrote: > >> Andy Lutomirski wrote: > >> >On 01/16/2014 08:17 PM, Howard Chu wrote: > >> >>Andy Lutomirski wrote: > >> >>>I'm interested in a persistent memory track. There seems to be plenty > >> >>>of other emails about this, but here's my take: > >> >> > >> >>I'm also interested in this track. I'm not up on FS development these > >> >>days, the last time I wrote filesystem code was nearly 20 years ago. But > >> >>persistent memory is a topic near and dear to my heart, and of great > >> >>relevance to my current pet project, the LMDB memory-mapped database. > >> >> > >> >>In a previous era I also developed block device drivers for > >> >>battery-backed external DRAM disks. (My ideal would have been systems > >> >>where all of RAM was persistent. I suppose we can just about get there > >> >>with mobile phones and tablets these days.) > >> >> > >> >>In the context of database engines, I'm interested in leveraging > >> >>persistent memory for write-back caching and how user level code can be > >> >>made aware of it. (If all your cache is persistent and guaranteed to > >> >>eventually reach stable store then you never need to fsync() a > >> >>transaction.) > > > > I don't think that is true - your still going to need fsync to get > > the CPU to flush it's caches and filesystem metadata into the > > persistent domain.... > > I think that this depends on the technology in question. > > I suspect (I don't know for sure) that, if the mapping is WT or UC, > that it would be possible to get the data fully flushed to persistent > storage by doing something like a UC read from any appropriate type of > I/O space (someone from Intel would have to confirm). And what of the filesystem metadata that is necessary to reference that data? What flushes that? e.g. using mmap of sparse files to dynamically allocate persistent memory space requires fdatasync() at minimum.... And then there's things like encrypted persistent memory when means applications can't directly access it and so mmap() will be buffered by the page cache just like a normal block device... > All of this suggests to me that a vsyscall "sync persistent memory" > might be better than a real syscall. Perhaps, but that implies some method other than a filesystem to manage access to persistent memory. > For what it's worth, some of the NV-DIMM systems are supposed to be > configured in such a way that, if power fails, an NMI, SMI, or even > (not really sure) a hardwired thing in the memory controller will > trigger the requisite flush. I don't personally believe in this if > L2/L3 cache are involved (they're too big), but for the little write > buffers and memory controller things, this seems entirely plausible. Right - at the moment we have to assume the persistence domain starts at the NVDIMM and doesn't cover the CPU's internal L* caches. I have no idea if/when we'll be seeing CPUs that have persistent caches, so we have to assume that data is still volatile and can be lost unless it has been specifically synced to persistent memory. i.e. persistent memory does not remove the need for fsync and friends... Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Chinner david@xxxxxxxxxxxxx -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>