block: add lld busy state exporting interface

This patch adds an new interface, blk_lld_busy(), to check lld's
busy state from the block layer.
blk_lld_busy() calls down into low-level drivers for the checking
if the drivers set q->lld_busy_fn() using blk_queue_lld_busy().

This resolves a performance problem on request stacking devices below.

Some drivers like scsi mid layer stop dispatching request when
they detect busy state on its low-level device like host/target/device.
It allows other requests to stay in the I/O scheduler's queue
for a chance of merging.

Request stacking drivers like request-based dm should follow
the same logic.
However, there is no generic interface for the stacked device
to check if the underlying device(s) are busy.
If the request stacking driver dispatches and submits requests to
the busy underlying device, the requests will stay in
the underlying device's queue without a chance of merging.
This causes performance problem on burst I/O load.

With this patch, busy state of the underlying device is exported
via q->lld_busy_fn().  So the request stacking driver can check it
and stop dispatching requests if busy.

The underlying device driver must return the busy state appropriately:
    1: when the device driver can't process requests immediately.
    0: when the device driver can process requests immediately,
       including abnormal situations where the device driver needs
       to kill all requests.

Signed-off-by: Kiyoshi Ueda <k-ueda@ct.jp.nec.com>
Signed-off-by: Jun'ichi Nomura <j-nomura@ce.jp.nec.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>

1 files changed, 28 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/block/blk-core.c b/block/blk-core.c
index c66333d8e48d..b2d0ac8b760e 100644
--- a/block/blk-core.c
+++ b/block/blk-core.c
@@ -2100,6 +2100,34 @@ void blk_rq_bio_prep(struct request_queue *q, struct request *rq,
 		rq->rq_disk = bio->bi_bdev->bd_disk;
 }
 
+/**
+ * blk_lld_busy - Check if underlying low-level drivers of a device are busy
+ * @q : the queue of the device being checked
+ *
+ * Description:
+ *    Check if underlying low-level drivers of a device are busy.
+ *    If the drivers want to export their busy state, they must set own
+ *    exporting function using blk_queue_lld_busy() first.
+ *
+ *    Basically, this function is used only by request stacking drivers
+ *    to stop dispatching requests to underlying devices when underlying
+ *    devices are busy.  This behavior helps more I/O merging on the queue
+ *    of the request stacking driver and prevents I/O throughput regression
+ *    on burst I/O load.
+ *
+ * Return:
+ *    0 - Not busy (The request stacking driver should dispatch request)
+ *    1 - Busy (The request stacking driver should stop dispatching request)
+ */
+int blk_lld_busy(struct request_queue *q)
+{
+	if (q->lld_busy_fn)
+		return q->lld_busy_fn(q);
+
+	return 0;
+}
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(blk_lld_busy);
+
 int kblockd_schedule_work(struct request_queue *q, struct work_struct *work)
 {
 	return queue_work(kblockd_workqueue, work);