tree 7535aac3227f576c0625be34b15d1bbcedeb9d31
parent 05c2f5c30b3ca2346a5bb7c74b0c9515d8f4fbd2
author Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org> 1548759991 +0100
committer Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk> 1548964223 -0700

block, bfq: do not plug I/O of in-service queue when harmful

If the in-service bfq_queue is sync and remains temporarily idle, then
I/O dispatching (from other queues) may be plugged. It may be dome for
two reasons: either to boost throughput, or to preserve the bandwidth
share of the in-service queue. In the first case, if the I/O of the
in-service queue, when it finally arrives, consists only of one small
I/O request, then it makes sense to plug even the I/O of the in-service
queue. In fact, serving such a small request immediately is likely to
lower throughput instead of boosting it, whereas waiting a little bit is
likely to let that request grow, thanks to request merging, and become
more profitable in terms of throughput (this is likely to happen exactly
because the I/O of the queue has been detected to boost throughput).

On the opposite end, if I/O dispatching is being plugged only to
preserve the bandwidth of the in-service queue, then it would be better
not to plug also the I/O of the in-service queue, because such a
plugging is likely to cause only loss of bandwidth for the queue.

Unfortunately, no distinction is made between the two cases, and the I/O
of the in-service queue is always plugged in case just a small I/O
request arrives. This commit draws this missing distinction and does not
perform harmful plugging.

Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>