Re: [PATCH v9 20/25] ext4: Convert from readpages to readahead

[Matthew Wilcox]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 10:37:34AM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2020 at 07:22:26AM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > From: "Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > Use the new readahead operation in ext4
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Reviewed-by: William Kucharski <william.kucharski@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  fs/ext4/ext4.h     |  3 +--
> >  fs/ext4/inode.c    | 21 +++++++++------------
> >  fs/ext4/readpage.c | 22 ++++++++--------------
> >  3 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 28 deletions(-)
> > 
> 
> Reviewed-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> > +		if (rac) {
> > +			page = readahead_page(rac);
> >  			prefetchw(&page->flags);
> > -			list_del(&page->lru);
> > -			if (add_to_page_cache_lru(page, mapping, page->index,
> > -				  readahead_gfp_mask(mapping)))
> > -				goto next_page;
> >  		}
> 
> Maybe the prefetchw(&page->flags) should be included in readahead_page()?
> Most of the callers do it.

I did notice that a lot of callers do that.  I wonder whether it (still)
helps or whether it's just cargo-cult programming.  It can't possibly
have helped before because we did list_del(&page->lru) as the very next
instruction after prefetchw(), and they're in the same cacheline.  It'd
be interesting to take it out and see what happens to performance.