linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 00/10] evacuate struct page from the block layer, introduce __pfn

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Date:	Thu, 7 May 2015 12:44:17 -0700
From:	Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
Cc:	Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Boaz Harrosh <boaz@...xistor.com>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>,
	Mike Snitzer <snitzer@...hat.com>, Neil Brown <neilb@...e.de>,
	Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
	Chris Mason <clm@...com>, Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Alasdair Kergon <agk@...hat.com>,
	"linux-nvdimm@...ts.01.org" <linux-nvdimm@...ts.01.org>,
	Mel Gorman <mgorman@...e.de>,
	Matthew Wilcox <willy@...ux.intel.com>,
	Ross Zwisler <ross.zwisler@...ux.intel.com>,
	Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
	Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@...ibm.com>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>, "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
	"Martin K. Petersen" <martin.petersen@...cle.com>,
	Julia Lawall <Julia.Lawall@...6.fr>, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 00/10] evacuate struct page from the block layer,
 introduce __pfn_t

On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org> wrote:
>
> * Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de> wrote:
>> > On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 05:19:48PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> >> What is the primary thing that is driving this need? Do we have a very
>> >> concrete example?
>> >
>> > FYI, I plan to to implement RAID acceleration using nvdimms, and I
>> > plan to ue pages for that.  The code just merge for 4.1 can easily
>> > support page backing, and I plan to use that for now.  This still
>> > leaves support for the gigantic intel nvdimms discovered over EFI
>> > out, but given that I don't have access to them, and I dont know
>> > of any publically available there's little I can do for now.  But
>> > adding on demand allocate struct pages for the seems like the
>> > easiest way forward.  Boaz already has code to allocate pages for
>> > them, although not on demand but at boot / plug in time.
>>
>> Hmmm, the capacities of persistent memory that would be assigned for
>> a raid accelerator would be limited by diminishing returns.  I.e.
>> there seems to be no point to assign more than 8GB or so to the
>> cache? [...]
>
> Why would that be the case?
>
> If it's not a temporary cache but a persistent cache that hosts all
> the data even after writeback completes then going to huge sizes will
> bring similar benefits to using a large, fast SSD disk on your
> desktop... The larger, the better. And it also persists across
> reboots.

True, that's more "dm-cache" than "RAID accelerator", but point taken.
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