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authorPaolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>2017-05-09 12:54:23 +0200
committerJens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>2017-05-10 07:39:43 -0600
commit43c1b3d6e536b7b21ed329ae54280d8ba308ba92 (patch)
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block, bfq: stress that low_latency must be off to get max throughput
The introduction of the BFQ and Kyber I/O schedulers has triggered a new wave of I/O benchmarks. Unfortunately, comments and discussions on these benchmarks confirm that there is still little awareness that it is very hard to achieve, at the same time, a low latency and a high throughput. In particular, virtually all benchmarks measure throughput, or throughput-related figures of merit, but, for BFQ, they use the scheduler in its default configuration. This configuration is geared, instead, toward a low latency. This is evidently a sign that BFQ documentation is still too unclear on this important aspect. This commit addresses this issue by stressing how BFQ configuration must be (easily) changed if the only goal is maximum throughput. Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/block')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/block/bfq-iosched.txt17
1 files changed, 16 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/block/bfq-iosched.txt b/Documentation/block/bfq-iosched.txt
index 1b87df6cd476..05e2822a80b3 100644
--- a/Documentation/block/bfq-iosched.txt
+++ b/Documentation/block/bfq-iosched.txt
@@ -11,6 +11,13 @@ controllers), BFQ's main features are:
groups (switching back to time distribution when needed to keep
throughput high).
+In its default configuration, BFQ privileges latency over
+throughput. So, when needed for achieving a lower latency, BFQ builds
+schedules that may lead to a lower throughput. If your main or only
+goal, for a given device, is to achieve the maximum-possible
+throughput at all times, then do switch off all low-latency heuristics
+for that device, by setting low_latency to 0. Full details in Section 3.
+
On average CPUs, the current version of BFQ can handle devices
performing at most ~30K IOPS; at most ~50 KIOPS on faster CPUs. As a
reference, 30-50 KIOPS correspond to very high bandwidths with
@@ -375,11 +382,19 @@ default, low latency mode is enabled. If enabled, interactive and soft
real-time applications are privileged and experience a lower latency,
as explained in more detail in the description of how BFQ works.
-DO NOT enable this mode if you need full control on bandwidth
+DISABLE this mode if you need full control on bandwidth
distribution. In fact, if it is enabled, then BFQ automatically
increases the bandwidth share of privileged applications, as the main
means to guarantee a lower latency to them.
+In addition, as already highlighted at the beginning of this document,
+DISABLE this mode if your only goal is to achieve a high throughput.
+In fact, privileging the I/O of some application over the rest may
+entail a lower throughput. To achieve the highest-possible throughput
+on a non-rotational device, setting slice_idle to 0 may be needed too
+(at the cost of giving up any strong guarantee on fairness and low
+latency).
+
timeout_sync
------------