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| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/block/biodoc.txt | 19 |
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/block/biodoc.txt b/Documentation/block/biodoc.txt index ecad6ee75705..6fab97ea7e6b 100644 --- a/Documentation/block/biodoc.txt +++ b/Documentation/block/biodoc.txt @@ -1040,23 +1040,21 @@ Front merges are handled by the binary trees in AS and deadline schedulers. iii. Plugging the queue to batch requests in anticipation of opportunities for merge/sort optimizations -This is just the same as in 2.4 so far, though per-device unplugging -support is anticipated for 2.5. Also with a priority-based i/o scheduler, -such decisions could be based on request priorities. - Plugging is an approach that the current i/o scheduling algorithm resorts to so that it collects up enough requests in the queue to be able to take advantage of the sorting/merging logic in the elevator. If the queue is empty when a request comes in, then it plugs the request queue -(sort of like plugging the bottom of a vessel to get fluid to build up) +(sort of like plugging the bath tub of a vessel to get fluid to build up) till it fills up with a few more requests, before starting to service the requests. This provides an opportunity to merge/sort the requests before passing them down to the device. There are various conditions when the queue is unplugged (to open up the flow again), either through a scheduled task or could be on demand. For example wait_on_buffer sets the unplugging going -(by running tq_disk) so the read gets satisfied soon. So in the read case, -the queue gets explicitly unplugged as part of waiting for completion, -in fact all queues get unplugged as a side-effect. +through sync_buffer() running blk_run_address_space(mapping). Or the caller +can do it explicity through blk_unplug(bdev). So in the read case, +the queue gets explicitly unplugged as part of waiting for completion on that +buffer. For page driven IO, the address space ->sync_page() takes care of +doing the blk_run_address_space(). Aside: This is kind of controversial territory, as it's not clear if plugging is @@ -1067,11 +1065,6 @@ Aside: multi-page bios being queued in one shot, we may not need to wait to merge a big request from the broken up pieces coming by. - Per-queue granularity unplugging (still a Todo) may help reduce some of the - concerns with just a single tq_disk flush approach. Something like - blk_kick_queue() to unplug a specific queue (right away ?) - or optionally, all queues, is in the plan. - 4.4 I/O contexts I/O contexts provide a dynamically allocated per process data area. They may be used in I/O schedulers, and in the block layer (could be used for IO statis, |