linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 03/13] scsi: unify allocation of scsi command and sense buffer

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Message-Id: <20090526163823U.fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>
Date:	Tue, 26 May 2009 16:38:09 +0900
From:	FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@....ntt.co.jp>
To:	jens.axboe@...cle.com
Cc:	fujita.tomonori@....ntt.co.jp,
	James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com, rdreier@...co.com,
	bharrosh@...asas.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, chris.mason@...cle.com,
	david@...morbit.com, hch@...radead.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	jack@...e.cz, yanmin_zhang@...ux.intel.com,
	linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 03/13] scsi: unify allocation of scsi command and sense
	buffer

On Tue, 26 May 2009 09:32:29 +0200
Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@...cle.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 26 2009, FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 May 2009 08:29:53 +0200
> > Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@...cle.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, May 26 2009, FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 25 May 2009 18:45:25 -0700
> > > > Roland Dreier <rdreier@...co.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > >  > Ideally there should be a MACRO that is defined to WORD_SIZE on cache-coherent
> > > > >  > ARCHs and to SMP_CACHE_BYTES on none-cache-coherent systems and use that size
> > > > >  > at the __align() attribute. (So only stupid ARCHES get hurt)
> > > > > 
> > > > > this seems to come up repeatedly -- I had a proposal a _long_ time ago
> > > > > that never quite got merged, cf http://lwn.net/Articles/2265/ and
> > > > > http://lwn.net/Articles/2269/ -- from 2002 (!?).  The idea is to go a
> > > > 
> > > > Yeah, I think that Benjamin did last time:
> > > > 
> > > > http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org/msg12632.html
> > > > 
> > > > IIRC, James didn't like it so I wrote the current code. I didn't see
> > > > any big performance difference with scsi_debug:
> > > > 
> > > > http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=120038907123706&w=2
> > > > 
> > > > Jens, you see the performance difference due to this unification?
> > > 
> > > Yes, it's definitely a worth while optimization. The problem isn't as
> > > such this specific allocation, it's the total number of allocations we
> > > do for a piece of IO. This sense buffer one is just one of many, I'm
> > > continually working to reduce them. If we get rid of this one and add
> > > the ->alloc_cmd() stuff, we can kill one more. The bio path already lost
> > > one. So in the IO stack, we went from 6 allocations to 3 for a piece of
> > > IO. And then it starts to add up. Even at just 30-50k iops, that's more
> > > than 1% of time in the testing I did.
> > 
> > I see, thanks. Hmm, possibly slab becomes slower. ;)
> > 
> > Then I think that we need something like the ->alloc_cmd()
> > method. Let's ask James. 
> > 
> > I don't think that it's just about simply adding the hook; there are
> > some issues that we need to think about. Though Boaz worries too much
> > a bit, I think.
> > 
> > I'm not sure about this patch if we add ->alloc_cmd(). I doubt that
> > there are any llds don't use ->alloc_cmd() worry about the overhead of
> > the separated sense buffer allocation. If a lld doesn't define the own
> > alloc_cmd, then I think it's fine to use the generic command
> > allocator that does the separate sense buffer allocation.
> 
> I think we should do the two things seperately. If we can safely inline
> the sense buffer in the command by doing the right alignment, then lets
> do that. The ->alloc_cmd() approach will be easier to do with an inline
> sense buffer.

James rejected this in the past. Let's wait for his verdict.

Yeah, we can inline the sense buffer but as we discussed in the past
several times, there are some good reasons that we should not do so, I
think.


> But there's really no reason to tie the two things together.
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