Date:	Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:04:31 +0100
From:	Corrado Zoccolo <czoccolo@...il.com>
To:	Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@...hat.com>
Cc:	Gui Jianfeng <guijianfeng@...fujitsu.com>,
	Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@...cle.com>,
	linux kernel mailing list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] cfq: Take whether cfq group is changed into account when 
	choosing service tree

Hi Vivek,

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@...hat.com> wrote:
>
> Thinking more about it...
>
> Moving all RT tasks to root group will increase the overall share of root
> group (including share of non RT workload like sync-idle, sync-noidle and
> async). Because everytime, RT task does some IO, root group will be put at the
> front of service tree (irrespective of the fact how much service it has
> received in the past w.r.t other groups). That will make root group gain
> share and in trun root group non-RT sync-idle, sync-nodile and async
> workload also gain share.
>
Yes, this can be a problem. However, it can obtain a similar effect to the
prio_changed concept (especially when group_isolation = 0). In fact, we wanted
to run sync_noidle after RT, and sync_noidle are in root group in the
uninsulated case.

> Another way to solve the issue could be to have a separate service tree
> and root group for RT workload. By default all the RT tasks (systemwide),
> will be put into that group and we will always serve that root rt group first
> and if that group does not have any request than serve the requests from
> regular (BE and IDLE tasks), group service tree.
Ok. In this way, in a group you won't have 2 arrays of service trees
(one for each priority), but just one of them.
Only the RT root group will be allowed to contain RT queues.
What about IDLE? Should we have an other root group for it, to have
system-wide idle?
In that case, the design will become more orthogonal.

>
> This will make sure that RT tasks system wide get full access to disk
> first and then BE and IDLE tasks get to run. Also BE and IDLE tasks in
> root group will not gain share.
>
> One issue with this approach is prio_changed concept. Because now all the
> RT tasks are in a seprate group altogether, there will be no concept of
> prio_changed with-in group. Rest of the group will have either BE or IDLE
> prio tasks only. So that would mean that I need to get rid of prio_changed
> concept while selecting workload with-in group and rely on either fresh
> selection of workload type based on rb_key offset or kind of force strict
> round-robin between workloads of type (sync-idle, sync-noidle and async).
>
> Does this make sense? Corrodo, do you forsee any issues if I get rid of
> prio_changed concept. So if a workload has expired, we will always do
> fresh selection of workload based on rb_key across service trees of
> sync-idle, sync-noidle and async. This might lead to issues of sync-noidle
> workload not gettting as good latency in the presence of RT tasks. May be
> forcing a strict round robin between workload types will mitigate that
> issue up to some extent.
>
I think the prio_changed concept can simply be dropped, and we can still have
lowest rb_key selection (that I think is superior to strict round robin).
I don't see any problem in this. In presence of RT, the latency will
go up anyway.

Thanks,
Corrado

> Thanks
> Vivek
>
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