Linus reports a _really_ small & slow (505kB, 15kB/s) USB device, on which blkid runs unpleasantly slow. He manages to optimize the blkid reads down to 1kB+16kB, but still kernel read-ahead turns it into 48kB. lseek 0, read 1024 => readahead 4 pages (start of file) lseek 1536, read 16384 => readahead 8 pages (page contiguous) The readahead heuristics involved here are reasonable ones in general. So it's good to fix blkid with fadvise(RANDOM), as Linus already did. For the kernel part, Linus suggests: So maybe we could be less aggressive about read-ahead when the size of the device is small? Turning a 16kB read into a 64kB one is a big deal, when it's about 15% of the whole device! This looks reasonable: smaller device tend to be slower (USB sticks as well as micro/mobile/old hard disks). Given that the non-rotational attribute is not always reported, we can take disk size as a max readahead size hint. This patch uses a formula that generates the following concrete limits: disk size readahead size (scale by 4) (scale by 2) 1M 8k 4M 16k 16M 32k 64M 64k 256M 128k --------------------------- (*) 1G 256k 4G 512k 16G 1024k 64G 2048k 256G 4096k (*) Since the default readahead size is 128k, this limit only takes effect for devices whose size is less than 256M. The formula is determined on the following data, collected by script: #!/bin/sh # please make sure BDEV is not mounted or opened by others BDEV=sdb for rasize in 4 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 do echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches echo $rasize > /sys/block/$BDEV/queue/read_ahead_kb time dd if=/dev/$BDEV of=/dev/null bs=4k count=102400 done The principle is, the formula shall not limit readahead size to such a degree that will impact some device's sequential read performance. The Intel SSD is special in that its throughput increases steadily with larger readahead size. However it may take years for Linux to increase its default readahead size to 2MB, so we don't take it seriously in the formula. SSD 80G Intel x25-M SSDSA2M080 (reported by Li Shaohua) rasize 1st run 2nd run ---------------------------------- 4k 123 MB/s 122 MB/s 16k 153 MB/s 153 MB/s 32k 161 MB/s 162 MB/s 64k 167 MB/s 168 MB/s 128k 197 MB/s 197 MB/s 256k 217 MB/s 217 MB/s 512k 238 MB/s 234 MB/s 1M 251 MB/s 248 MB/s 2M 259 MB/s 257 MB/s ==> 4M 269 MB/s 264 MB/s 8M 266 MB/s 266 MB/s Note that ==> points to the readahead size that yields plateau throughput. SSD 22G MARVELL SD88SA02 MP1F (reported by Jens Axboe) rasize 1st 2nd -------------------------------- 4k 41 MB/s 41 MB/s 16k 85 MB/s 81 MB/s 32k 102 MB/s 109 MB/s 64k 125 MB/s 144 MB/s 128k 183 MB/s 185 MB/s 256k 216 MB/s 216 MB/s 512k 216 MB/s 236 MB/s 1024k 251 MB/s 252 MB/s 2M 258 MB/s 258 MB/s ==> 4M 266 MB/s 266 MB/s 8M 266 MB/s 266 MB/s SSD 30G SanDisk SATA 5000 4k 29.6 MB/s 29.6 MB/s 29.6 MB/s 16k 52.1 MB/s 52.1 MB/s 52.1 MB/s 32k 61.5 MB/s 61.5 MB/s 61.5 MB/s 64k 67.2 MB/s 67.2 MB/s 67.1 MB/s 128k 71.4 MB/s 71.3 MB/s 71.4 MB/s 256k 73.4 MB/s 73.4 MB/s 73.3 MB/s ==> 512k 74.6 MB/s 74.6 MB/s 74.6 MB/s 1M 74.7 MB/s 74.6 MB/s 74.7 MB/s 2M 76.1 MB/s 74.6 MB/s 74.6 MB/s USB stick 32G Teclast CoolFlash idVendor=1307, idProduct=0165 4k 7.9 MB/s 7.9 MB/s 7.9 MB/s 16k 17.9 MB/s 17.9 MB/s 17.9 MB/s 32k 24.5 MB/s 24.5 MB/s 24.5 MB/s 64k 28.7 MB/s 28.7 MB/s 28.7 MB/s 128k 28.8 MB/s 28.9 MB/s 28.9 MB/s ==> 256k 30.5 MB/s 30.5 MB/s 30.5 MB/s 512k 30.9 MB/s 31.0 MB/s 30.9 MB/s 1M 31.0 MB/s 30.9 MB/s 30.9 MB/s 2M 30.9 MB/s 30.9 MB/s 30.9 MB/s USB stick 4G SanDisk Cruzer idVendor=0781, idProduct=5151 4k 6.4 MB/s 6.4 MB/s 6.4 MB/s 16k 13.4 MB/s 13.4 MB/s 13.2 MB/s 32k 17.8 MB/s 17.9 MB/s 17.8 MB/s 64k 21.3 MB/s 21.3 MB/s 21.2 MB/s 128k 21.4 MB/s 21.4 MB/s 21.4 MB/s ==> 256k 23.3 MB/s 23.2 MB/s 23.2 MB/s 512k 23.3 MB/s 23.8 MB/s 23.4 MB/s 1M 23.8 MB/s 23.4 MB/s 23.3 MB/s 2M 23.4 MB/s 23.2 MB/s 23.4 MB/s USB stick 2G idVendor=0204, idProduct=6025 SerialNumber: 08082005000113 4k 6.7 MB/s 6.9 MB/s 6.7 MB/s 16k 11.7 MB/s 11.7 MB/s 11.7 MB/s 32k 12.4 MB/s 12.4 MB/s 12.4 MB/s 64k 13.4 MB/s 13.4 MB/s 13.4 MB/s 128k 13.4 MB/s 13.4 MB/s 13.4 MB/s ==> 256k 13.6 MB/s 13.6 MB/s 13.6 MB/s 512k 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 1M 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 2M 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 13.7 MB/s 64 MB, USB full speed (collected by Clemens Ladisch) Bus 003 Device 003: ID 08ec:0011 M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers DiskOnKey 4KB: 139.339 s, 376 kB/s 16KB: 81.0427 s, 647 kB/s 32KB: 71.8513 s, 730 kB/s ==> 64KB: 67.3872 s, 778 kB/s 128KB: 67.5434 s, 776 kB/s 256KB: 65.9019 s, 796 kB/s 512KB: 66.2282 s, 792 kB/s 1024KB: 67.4632 s, 777 kB/s 2048KB: 69.9759 s, 749 kB/s An unnamed SD card (Yakui): 4k 195.873 s, 5.5 MB/s 8k 123.425 s, 8.7 MB/s 16k 86.6425 s, 12.4 MB/s 32k 66.7519 s, 16.1 MB/s ==> 64k 58.5262 s, 18.3 MB/s 128k 59.3847 s, 18.1 MB/s 256k 59.3188 s, 18.1 MB/s 512k 59.0218 s, 18.2 MB/s CC: Li Shaohua CC: Clemens Ladisch Acked-by: Jens Axboe Acked-by: Rik van Riel Tested-by: Vivek Goyal Tested-by: Linus Torvalds Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang --- block/genhd.c | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+) --- linux-next.orig/block/genhd.c 2011-11-29 11:47:10.000000000 +0800 +++ linux-next/block/genhd.c 2011-11-29 11:47:30.000000000 +0800 @@ -577,6 +577,7 @@ exit: void add_disk(struct gendisk *disk) { struct backing_dev_info *bdi; + size_t size; dev_t devt; int retval; @@ -622,6 +623,25 @@ void add_disk(struct gendisk *disk) WARN_ON(retval); disk_add_events(disk); + + /* + * Scale down default readahead size for small devices. + * disk size readahead size + * 1M 8k + * 4M 16k + * 16M 32k + * 64M 64k + * 255M 64k (the round down effect) + * 256M 128k + * 1G 256k + * 4G 512k + * 16G 1024k + */ + size = get_capacity(disk); + if (size) { + size = 1 << (ilog2(size >> 9) / 2); + bdi->ra_pages = min(bdi->ra_pages, size); + } } EXPORT_SYMBOL(add_disk); -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/