linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] block: virtio_blk: don't hold spin lock during world switch

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Date:	Fri, 30 May 2014 11:34:49 +0800
From:	Ming Lei <ming.lei@...onical.com>
To:	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>
Cc:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>,
	virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] block: virtio_blk: don't hold spin lock during world switch

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk> wrote:
> On 2014-05-29 20:49, Ming Lei wrote:
>>
>> Firstly, it isn't necessary to hold lock of vblk->vq_lock
>> when notifying hypervisor about queued I/O.
>>
>> Secondly, virtqueue_notify() will cause world switch and
>> it may take long time on some hypervisors(such as, qemu-arm),
>> so it isn't good to hold the lock and block other vCPUs.
>>
>> On arm64 quad core VM(qemu-kvm), the patch can increase I/O
>> performance a lot with VIRTIO_RING_F_EVENT_IDX enabled:
>>         - without the patch: 14K IOPS
>>         - with the patch: 34K IOPS
>
>
> Patch looks good to me. I don't see a hit on my qemu-kvm testing, but it
> definitely makes sense and I can see it hurting in other places.

It isn't easy to observe the improvement on x86 VM, especially
with few vCPUs, because qemu-system-x86_64 only takes
several microseconds to handle the notification, but on arm64, it
may take hundreds of microseconds, so the improvement is
obvious on arm VM.

I hope this patch can be merged, at least arm VM can benefit
from it.


Thanks,
--
Ming Lei
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