Re: performance "regression" in cfq compared to anticipatory,deadline and noop

From: Kasper Sandberg
Date: Sun May 11 2008 - 10:05:27 EST


On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 14:14 +0100, Daniel J Blueman wrote:
> I've been experiencing this for a while also; an almost 50% regression
> is seen for single-process reads (ie sync) if slice_idle is 1ms or
> more (eg default of 8) [1], which seems phenomenal.
>
> Jens, is this the expected price to pay for optimal busy-spindle
> scheduling, a design issue, bug or am I missing something totally?
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>
> --- [1]
>
> # cat /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
> 8
> # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
> 5000+0 records in
> 5000+0 records out
> 327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 4.92922 s, 66.5 MB/s
>
> # echo 0 >/sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
> # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
> # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
> 5000+0 records in
> 5000+0 records out
> 327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 2.74098 s, 120 MB/s
>
> # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
>
> /dev/sda:
> Timing cached reads: 15464 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7741.05 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 342 MB in 3.01 seconds = 113.70 MB/sec
>
> [120MB/s is known platter-rate for this disc, so expected]

This appears to be what i get aswell..

root@quadstation # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 5.48209 s, 59.8 MB/s
root@quadstation # echo 0 >/sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 2.93932 s, 111 MB/s
root@quadstation # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
Timing cached reads: 7264 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3633.82 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 322 MB in 3.01 seconds = 107.00 MB/se
root@quadstation # echo 0 >/sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
Timing cached reads: 15268 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7643.54 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 328 MB in 3.01 seconds = 108.85 MB/sec


To be sure, i did it all again:
noop:
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 2.85503 s, 115 MB/s
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # hdparm -tT /dev/sda
Timing cached reads: 14076 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7045.78 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 328 MB in 3.01 seconds = 109.12 MB/sec

anticipatory:
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 2.96948 s, 110 MB/s
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # hdparm -tT /dev/sda
Timing cached reads: 13424 MB in 2.00 seconds = 6719.29 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 328 MB in 3.01 seconds = 109.13 MB/sec

cfq:
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=64k count=5000
5000+0 records in
5000+0 records out
327680000 bytes (328 MB) copied, 5.25252 s, 62.4 MB/s
root@quadstation # echo 1 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
root@quadstation # hdparm -tT /dev/sda
Timing cached reads: 13434 MB in 2.00 seconds = 6723.59 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 188 MB in 3.00 seconds = 62.57 MB/sec

Thisd would appear to be quite a considerable performance difference.

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