Re: [RFC 1/2] Eliminate over- and under-counting of io_ticks

From: Hou Tao
Date: Tue Jun 09 2020 - 21:41:24 EST


Hi,

On 2020/6/9 12:07, Josh Snyder wrote:
> Previously, io_ticks could be under-counted. Consider these I/Os along
> the time axis (in jiffies):
>
> t 012345678
> io1 |----|
> io2 |---|
>
> Under the old approach, io_ticks would count up to 6, like so:
>
> t 012345678
> io1 |----|
> io2 |---|
> stamp 0 45 8
> io_ticks 1 23 6
>
> With this change, io_ticks instead counts to 8, eliminating the
> under-counting:
>
> t 012345678
> io1 |----|
> io2 |---|
> stamp 0 5 8
> io_ticks 0 5 8
>
For the following case, the under-counting is still possible if io2 wins cmpxchg():

t 0123456
io1 |-----|
io2 |--|
stamp 0 6
io_ticks 0 3

However considering patch 2 tries to improve sampling rate to 1 us, the problem will gone.

> It was also possible for io_ticks to be over-counted. Consider a
> workload that issues I/Os deterministically at intervals of 8ms (125Hz).
> If each I/O takes 1ms, then the true utilization is 12.5%. The previous
> implementation will increment io_ticks once for each jiffy in which an
> I/O ends. Since the workload issues an I/O reliably for each jiffy, the
> reported utilization will be 100%. This commit changes the approach such
> that only I/Os which cross a boundary between jiffies are counted. With
> this change, the given workload would count an I/O tick on every eighth
> jiffy, resulting in a (correct) calculated utilization of 12.5%.
>
> Signed-off-by: Josh Snyder <joshs@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Fixes: 5b18b5a73760 ("block: delete part_round_stats and switch to less precise counting")
> ---
> block/blk-core.c | 20 +++++++++++++-------
> 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/block/blk-core.c b/block/blk-core.c
> index d1b79dfe9540..a0bbd9e099b9 100644
> --- a/block/blk-core.c
> +++ b/block/blk-core.c
> @@ -1396,14 +1396,22 @@ unsigned int blk_rq_err_bytes(const struct request *rq)
> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(blk_rq_err_bytes);
>
> -static void update_io_ticks(struct hd_struct *part, unsigned long now, bool end)
> +static void update_io_ticks(struct hd_struct *part, unsigned long now, unsigned long start)
> {
> unsigned long stamp;
> + unsigned long elapsed;
> again:
> stamp = READ_ONCE(part->stamp);
> if (unlikely(stamp != now)) {
> - if (likely(cmpxchg(&part->stamp, stamp, now) == stamp))
> - __part_stat_add(part, io_ticks, end ? now - stamp : 1);
> + if (likely(cmpxchg(&part->stamp, stamp, now) == stamp)) {
> + // stamp denotes the last IO to finish
> + // If this IO started before stamp, then there was overlap between this IO
> + // and that one. We increment only by the non-overlap time.
> + // If not, there was no overlap and we increment by our own time,
> + // disregarding stamp.
> + elapsed = now - (start < stamp ? stamp : start);
> + __part_stat_add(part, io_ticks, elapsed);
> + }
> }
> if (part->partno) {
> part = &part_to_disk(part)->part0;
> @@ -1439,7 +1447,7 @@ void blk_account_io_done(struct request *req, u64 now)
> part_stat_lock();
> part = req->part;
>
> - update_io_ticks(part, jiffies, true);
> + update_io_ticks(part, jiffies, nsecs_to_jiffies(req->start_time_ns));
> part_stat_inc(part, ios[sgrp]);
> part_stat_add(part, nsecs[sgrp], now - req->start_time_ns);
> part_stat_unlock();
> @@ -1456,7 +1464,6 @@ void blk_account_io_start(struct request *rq)
> rq->part = disk_map_sector_rcu(rq->rq_disk, blk_rq_pos(rq));
>
> part_stat_lock();
> - update_io_ticks(rq->part, jiffies, false);
> part_stat_unlock();
> }
>
> @@ -1468,7 +1475,6 @@ unsigned long disk_start_io_acct(struct gendisk *disk, unsigned int sectors,
> unsigned long now = READ_ONCE(jiffies);
>
> part_stat_lock();
> - update_io_ticks(part, now, false);
> part_stat_inc(part, ios[sgrp]);
> part_stat_add(part, sectors[sgrp], sectors);
> part_stat_local_inc(part, in_flight[op_is_write(op)]);
> @@ -1487,7 +1493,7 @@ void disk_end_io_acct(struct gendisk *disk, unsigned int op,
> unsigned long duration = now - start_time;
>
> part_stat_lock();
> - update_io_ticks(part, now, true);
> + update_io_ticks(part, now, start_time);
> part_stat_add(part, nsecs[sgrp], jiffies_to_nsecs(duration));
> part_stat_local_dec(part, in_flight[op_is_write(op)]);
> part_stat_unlock();
>