writeback: optimize periodic bdi thread wakeups
Whe the first inode for a bdi is marked dirty, we wake up the bdi thread which
should take care of the periodic background write-out. However, the write-out
will actually start only 'dirty_writeback_interval' centisecs later, so we can
delay the wake-up.
This change was requested by Nick Piggin who pointed out that if we delay the
wake-up, we weed out 2 unnecessary contex switches, which matters because
'__mark_inode_dirty()' is a hot-path function.
This patch introduces a new function - 'bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed()', which
sets up a timer to wake-up the bdi thread and returns. So the wake-up is
delayed.
We also delete the timer in bdi threads just before writing-back. And
synchronously delete it when unregistering bdi. At the unregister point the bdi
does not have any users, so no one can arm it again.
Since now we take 'bdi->wb_lock' in the timer, which can execute in softirq
context, we have to use 'spin_lock_bh()' for 'bdi->wb_lock'. This patch makes
this change as well.
This patch also moves the 'bdi_wb_init()' function down in the file to avoid
forward-declaration of 'bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed()'.
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
diff --git a/include/linux/backing-dev.h b/include/linux/backing-dev.h
index 71b6223..7628219 100644
--- a/include/linux/backing-dev.h
+++ b/include/linux/backing-dev.h
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@
unsigned long last_active; /* last time bdi thread was active */
struct task_struct *task; /* writeback thread */
+ struct timer_list wakeup_timer; /* used for delayed bdi thread wakeup */
struct list_head b_dirty; /* dirty inodes */
struct list_head b_io; /* parked for writeback */
struct list_head b_more_io; /* parked for more writeback */
@@ -105,6 +106,7 @@
int bdi_writeback_thread(void *data);
int bdi_has_dirty_io(struct backing_dev_info *bdi);
void bdi_arm_supers_timer(void);
+void bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed(struct backing_dev_info *bdi);
extern spinlock_t bdi_lock;
extern struct list_head bdi_list;