linux-kernel - Re: [RFC 0/1] writeback: add sysfs to config the number of writeback contexts

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <275322fe-b8d7-4081-80cf-926874286ea9@vivo.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2025 19:19:20 +0800
From: wangyufei <wangyufei@...o.com>
To: Kundan Kumar <kundan.kumar@...sung.com>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
 David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
 Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
 "Liam R. Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>, Vlastimil Babka
 <vbabka@...e.cz>, Mike Rapoport <rppt@...nel.org>,
 Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>,
 "Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@...radead.org>,
 Stephen Rothwell <sfr@...b.auug.org.au>,
 open list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
 "open list:MEMORY MANAGEMENT - MISC" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
 "open list:PAGE CACHE" <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>
Cc: anuj20.g@...sung.com, hch@....de, bernd@...ernd.com, djwong@...nel.org,
 jack@...e.cz, opensource.kernel@...o.com
Subject: Re: [RFC 0/1] writeback: add sysfs to config the number of writeback
 contexts

On 8/29/2025 4:59 PM, Kundan Kumar wrote:
> On 8/25/2025 5:59 PM, wangyufei wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> We've been interested in this patch about parallelizing writeback [1]
>> and have been following its discussion and development. Our testing in
>> several application scenarios on mobile devices has shown significant
>> performance improvements.
>>
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for sharing this work.
>
> Could you clarify a few details about your test setup?
>
> - Which filesystem did you run these experiments on?
> - What were the specifics of the workload (number of threads, block size,
>     I/O size)?
> - If you are using fio, can you please share the fio command.
> - How much RAM was available on the test system?
> - Can you share the performance improvement numbers you observed?
>
> That would help in understanding the impact of parallel writeback?
Hi Kundan，

Most of the time we tested this patch on mobile devices. The test 
platform setup is shown as below:

- filesystem：F2FS

- system config：
Number of CPUs = 8
System RAM = 11G

- workload & fio：We used the same fio command as mentioned in your patch
fio command line：
fio --directory=/mnt --name=test --bs=4k --iodepth=1024 --rw=randwrite
--ioengine=io_uring --time_based=1 -runtime=60 --numjobs=8 --size=450M
--direct=0  --eta-interval=1 --eta-newline=1 --group_reporting

- Performance gains：
Base F2FS                         ：973 MiB/s
Parallel Writeback F2FS   ：1237 MiB/s (+27%)
>
> I made similar modifications to dynamically configure the number of
> writeback threads in this experimental patch. Refer to patches 14 and 15:
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250807045706.2848-1-kundan.kumar@samsung.com/
> The key difference is that this change also enables a reduction in the
> number of writeback threads.
Thanks for sharing the patch. I have a few questions:
- The current approach freezes the filesystem and reallocates all 
writeback_ctx structures. Could this introduce latency? In some cases, I 
think the existing bdi_writeback_ctx structures could be reused instead.
- Are there other use cases for dynamic thread tuning besides 
initialization and testing?
- What methods are used to test the stability of this function?

Finally, I would like to ask if there are any problems to be solved or 
optimization directions worth discussing for the parallelizing 
filesystem writeback?

Thanks，

yufei