[PATCH 03/11] readahead: bump up the default readahead size

From: Wu Fengguang
Date: Sat Feb 06 2010 - 23:15:24 EST

Use 512kb max readahead size, and 32kb min readahead size.

The former helps io performance for common workloads.
The latter will be used in the thrashing safe context readahead.

-- Rationals on the 512kb size --

I believe it yields more I/O throughput without noticeably increasing
I/O latency for today's HDD.

For example, for a 100MB/s and 8ms access time HDD, its random IO or
highly concurrent sequential IO would in theory be:

io_size KB access_time transfer_time io_latency util% throughput KB/s
4 8 0.04 8.04 0.49% 497.57
8 8 0.08 8.08 0.97% 990.33
16 8 0.16 8.16 1.92% 1961.69
32 8 0.31 8.31 3.76% 3849.62
64 8 0.62 8.62 7.25% 7420.29
128 8 1.25 9.25 13.51% 13837.84
256 8 2.50 10.50 23.81% 24380.95
512 8 5.00 13.00 38.46% 39384.62
1024 8 10.00 18.00 55.56% 56888.89
2048 8 20.00 28.00 71.43% 73142.86
4096 8 40.00 48.00 83.33% 85333.33

The 128KB => 512KB readahead size boosts IO throughput from ~13MB/s to
~39MB/s, while merely increases (minimal) IO latency from 9.25ms to 13ms.

As for SSD, I find that Intel X25-M SSD desires large readahead size
even for sequential reads:

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

The two other impacts of an enlarged readahead size are

- memory footprint (caused by readahead miss)
Sequential readahead hit ratio is pretty high regardless of max
readahead size; the extra memory footprint is mainly caused by
enlarged mmap read-around.
I measured my desktop:
- under Xwindow:
128KB readahead hit ratio = 143MB/230MB = 62%
512KB readahead hit ratio = 138MB/248MB = 55%
1MB readahead hit ratio = 130MB/253MB = 51%
- under console: (seems more stable than the Xwindow data)
128KB readahead hit ratio = 30MB/56MB = 53%
1MB readahead hit ratio = 30MB/59MB = 51%
So the impact to memory footprint looks acceptable.

- readahead thrashing
It will now cost 1MB readahead buffer per stream. Memory tight
systems typically do not run multiple streams; but if they do
so, it should help I/O performance as long as we can avoid
thrashing, which can be achieved with the following patches.

-- Benchmarks by Vivek Goyal --

I have got two paths to the HP EVA and got multipath device setup(dm-3).
I run increasing number of sequential readers. File system is ext3 and
filesize is 1G.
I have run the tests 3 times (3sets) and taken the average of it.

Workload=bsr iosched=cfq Filesz=1G bs=32K
======================================================================
2.6.33-rc5 2.6.33-rc5-readahead
job Set NR ReadBW(KB/s) MaxClat(us) ReadBW(KB/s) MaxClat(us)
--- --- -- ------------ ----------- ------------ -----------
bsr 3 1 141768 130965 190302 97937.3
bsr 3 2 131979 135402 185636 223286
bsr 3 4 132351 420733 185986 363658
bsr 3 8 133152 455434 184352 428478
bsr 3 16 130316 674499 185646 594311

I ran same test on a different piece of hardware. There are few SATA disks
(5-6) in striped configuration behind a hardware RAID controller.

Workload=bsr iosched=cfq Filesz=1G bs=32K
======================================================================
2.6.33-rc5 2.6.33-rc5-readahead
job Set NR ReadBW(KB/s) MaxClat(us) ReadBW(KB/s) MaxClat(us)
--- --- -- ------------ ----------- ------------ -----------
bsr 3 1 147569 14369.7 160191 22752
bsr 3 2 124716 243932 149343 184698
bsr 3 4 123451 327665 147183 430875
bsr 3 8 122486 455102 144568 484045
bsr 3 16 117645 1.03957e+06 137485 1.06257e+06

Tested-by: Vivek Goyal <vgoyal@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Chris Mason <chris.mason@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx>
CC: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@xxxxxxxxxx>
CC: Christian Ehrhardt <ehrhardt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@xxxxxxxxx>
---
include/linux/mm.h | 4 ++--
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- linux.orig/include/linux/mm.h 2010-01-30 17:38:49.000000000 +0800
+++ linux/include/linux/mm.h 2010-01-30 18:09:58.000000000 +0800
@@ -1184,8 +1184,8 @@ int write_one_page(struct page *page, in
void task_dirty_inc(struct task_struct *tsk);

/* readahead.c */
-#define VM_MAX_READAHEAD 128 /* kbytes */
-#define VM_MIN_READAHEAD 16 /* kbytes (includes current page) */
+#define VM_MAX_READAHEAD 512 /* kbytes */
+#define VM_MIN_READAHEAD 32 /* kbytes (includes current page) */

int force_page_cache_readahead(struct address_space *mapping, struct file *filp,
pgoff_t offset, unsigned long nr_to_read);


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