Re: [PATCH] aio: Convert ioctx_table to XArray

From: Jens Axboe
Date: Tue Dec 11 2018 - 13:52:11 EST


On 12/11/18 11:51 AM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 11:32:54AM -0700, Jens Axboe wrote:
>> Don't see any regressions. But if we're fiddling with it anyway, can't
>> we do something smarter? Make the fast path just index a table, and put
>> all the big hammers in setup/destroy. We're spending a non-substantial
>> amount of time doing lookups, that's really no different before and
>> after the patch.
>
> Thanks for checking it out.
>
> I think the fast path does just index a table. Until you have more than
> 64 pointers in the XArray, it's just xa->head->slots[i]. And then up
> to 4096 pointers, it's xa->head->slots[i >> 6]->slots[i]. It has the
> advantage that if you only have one kioctx (which is surely many programs
> using AIO), it's just xa->head, so even better than a table lookup.
>
> It'll start to deteriorate after 4096 kioctxs, with one extra indirection
> for every 6 bits, but by that point, we'd've been straining the memory
> allocator to allocate a large table anyway.

I agree, and nobody cares about 4k kioctxs, you're way into the weeds
at that point anyway.

So as the followup said, I think we're fine as-is for this particular
case.

--
Jens Axboe