block, bfq: limit tags for writes and async I/O

Asynchronous I/O can easily starve synchronous I/O (both sync reads
and sync writes), by consuming all request tags. Similarly, storms of
synchronous writes, such as those that sync(2) may trigger, can starve
synchronous reads. In their turn, these two problems may also cause
BFQ to loose control on latency for interactive and soft real-time
applications. For example, on a PLEXTOR PX-256M5S SSD, LibreOffice
Writer takes 0.6 seconds to start if the device is idle, but it takes
more than 45 seconds (!) if there are sequential writes in the
background.

This commit addresses this issue by limiting the maximum percentage of
tags that asynchronous I/O requests and synchronous write requests can
consume. In particular, this commit grants a higher threshold to
synchronous writes, to prevent the latter from being starved by
asynchronous I/O.

According to the above test, LibreOffice Writer now starts in about
1.2 seconds on average, regardless of the background workload, and
apart from some rare outlier. To check this improvement, run, e.g.,
sudo ./comm_startup_lat.sh bfq 5 5 seq 10 "lowriter --terminate_after_init"
for the comm_startup_lat benchmark in the S suite [1].

[1] https://github.com/Algodev-github/S

Tested-by: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@natalenko.name>
Tested-by: Holger Hoffstätte <holger@applied-asynchrony.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>

2 files changed, 89 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/block/bfq-iosched.c b/block/bfq-iosched.c
index f352b1677143..a7ab0cb50733 100644
--- a/block/bfq-iosched.c
+++ b/block/bfq-iosched.c
@@ -417,6 +417,82 @@ static struct request *bfq_choose_req(struct bfq_data *bfqd,
 	}
 }
 
+/*
+ * See the comments on bfq_limit_depth for the purpose of
+ * the depths set in the function.
+ */
+static void bfq_update_depths(struct bfq_data *bfqd, struct sbitmap_queue *bt)
+{
+	bfqd->sb_shift = bt->sb.shift;
+
+	/*
+	 * In-word depths if no bfq_queue is being weight-raised:
+	 * leaving 25% of tags only for sync reads.
+	 *
+	 * In next formulas, right-shift the value
+	 * (1U<<bfqd->sb_shift), instead of computing directly
+	 * (1U<<(bfqd->sb_shift - something)), to be robust against
+	 * any possible value of bfqd->sb_shift, without having to
+	 * limit 'something'.
+	 */
+	/* no more than 50% of tags for async I/O */
+	bfqd->word_depths[0][0] = max((1U<<bfqd->sb_shift)>>1, 1U);
+	/*
+	 * no more than 75% of tags for sync writes (25% extra tags
+	 * w.r.t. async I/O, to prevent async I/O from starving sync
+	 * writes)
+	 */
+	bfqd->word_depths[0][1] = max(((1U<<bfqd->sb_shift) * 3)>>2, 1U);
+
+	/*
+	 * In-word depths in case some bfq_queue is being weight-
+	 * raised: leaving ~63% of tags for sync reads. This is the
+	 * highest percentage for which, in our tests, application
+	 * start-up times didn't suffer from any regression due to tag
+	 * shortage.
+	 */
+	/* no more than ~18% of tags for async I/O */
+	bfqd->word_depths[1][0] = max(((1U<<bfqd->sb_shift) * 3)>>4, 1U);
+	/* no more than ~37% of tags for sync writes (~20% extra tags) */
+	bfqd->word_depths[1][1] = max(((1U<<bfqd->sb_shift) * 6)>>4, 1U);
+}
+
+/*
+ * Async I/O can easily starve sync I/O (both sync reads and sync
+ * writes), by consuming all tags. Similarly, storms of sync writes,
+ * such as those that sync(2) may trigger, can starve sync reads.
+ * Limit depths of async I/O and sync writes so as to counter both
+ * problems.
+ */
+static void bfq_limit_depth(unsigned int op, struct blk_mq_alloc_data *data)
+{
+	struct blk_mq_tags *tags = blk_mq_tags_from_data(data);
+	struct bfq_data *bfqd = data->q->elevator->elevator_data;
+	struct sbitmap_queue *bt;
+
+	if (op_is_sync(op) && !op_is_write(op))
+		return;
+
+	if (data->flags & BLK_MQ_REQ_RESERVED) {
+		if (unlikely(!tags->nr_reserved_tags)) {
+			WARN_ON_ONCE(1);
+			return;
+		}
+		bt = &tags->breserved_tags;
+	} else
+		bt = &tags->bitmap_tags;
+
+	if (unlikely(bfqd->sb_shift != bt->sb.shift))
+		bfq_update_depths(bfqd, bt);
+
+	data->shallow_depth =
+		bfqd->word_depths[!!bfqd->wr_busy_queues][op_is_sync(op)];
+
+	bfq_log(bfqd, "[%s] wr_busy %d sync %d depth %u",
+			__func__, bfqd->wr_busy_queues, op_is_sync(op),
+			data->shallow_depth);
+}
+
 static struct bfq_queue *
 bfq_rq_pos_tree_lookup(struct bfq_data *bfqd, struct rb_root *root,
 		     sector_t sector, struct rb_node **ret_parent,
@@ -5285,6 +5361,7 @@ static struct elv_fs_entry bfq_attrs[] = {
 
 static struct elevator_type iosched_bfq_mq = {
 	.ops.mq = {
+		.limit_depth		= bfq_limit_depth,
 		.prepare_request	= bfq_prepare_request,
 		.finish_request		= bfq_finish_request,
 		.exit_icq		= bfq_exit_icq,
diff --git a/block/bfq-iosched.h b/block/bfq-iosched.h
index 5d47b58d5fc8..fcd941008127 100644
--- a/block/bfq-iosched.h
+++ b/block/bfq-iosched.h
@@ -629,6 +629,18 @@ struct bfq_data {
 	struct bfq_io_cq *bio_bic;
 	/* bfqq associated with the task issuing current bio for merging */
 	struct bfq_queue *bio_bfqq;
+
+	/*
+	 * Cached sbitmap shift, used to compute depth limits in
+	 * bfq_update_depths.
+	 */
+	unsigned int sb_shift;
+
+	/*
+	 * Depth limits used in bfq_limit_depth (see comments on the
+	 * function)
+	 */
+	unsigned int word_depths[2][2];
 };
 
 enum bfqq_state_flags {