On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 08:33:15AM -0600, James Bottomley wrote: > Right, it's the clock algorithm to prevent tag starvation. If you have > hands representing the first and last tag and they're never allowed to > cross, the device can't starve any tag for too long because eventually > it will be the only outstanding command. > > It's not the only algorithm however. Banging down an ordered tag every > 200 or so commands has exactly the same effect. In fact the clock > algorithm was what the 53c700 driver used (before it was converted to > generic tags) and the ordered tag what aic7xxx uses. > > Realistically, tag starvation isn't really a problem. It was a known > issue for 80s era hardware. I've got some of the oldest drives on the > planet and I didn't see a problem when the clock algorithm was removed > from 53c700. The problem is that each driver is solving the problem in its own way right now, which is clearly daft. And no drive manufactured in the past fifteen years supports ordered tags anyway, so they're only a placebo at this point. -- Matthew Wilcox Intel Open Source Technology Centre "Bill, look, we understand that you're interested in selling us this operating system, but compare it to ours. We can't possibly take such a retrograde step." -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
