vmscan: add block plug for page reclaim
authorShaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com>
Tue, 1 Nov 2011 00:07:03 +0000 (17:07 -0700)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Tue, 1 Nov 2011 00:30:45 +0000 (17:30 -0700)
per-task block plug can reduce block queue lock contention and increase
request merge.  Currently page reclaim doesn't support it.  I originally
thought page reclaim doesn't need it, because kswapd thread count is
limited and file cache write is done at flusher mostly.

When I test a workload with heavy swap in a 4-node machine, each CPU is
doing direct page reclaim and swap.  This causes block queue lock
contention.  In my test, without below patch, the CPU utilization is about
2% ~ 7%.  With the patch, the CPU utilization is about 1% ~ 3%.  Disk
throughput isn't changed.  This should improve normal kswapd write and
file cache write too (increase request merge for example), but might not
be so obvious as I explain above.

Signed-off-by: Shaohua Li <shaohua.li@intel.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan.kim@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
mm/vmscan.c

index b68a9342d5a3459fc4ea2d9ec674b142b1311620..b1520b077858aeda1485bf0a29fadb2724e89494 100644 (file)
@@ -2005,12 +2005,14 @@ static void shrink_zone(int priority, struct zone *zone,
        enum lru_list l;
        unsigned long nr_reclaimed, nr_scanned;
        unsigned long nr_to_reclaim = sc->nr_to_reclaim;
+       struct blk_plug plug;
 
 restart:
        nr_reclaimed = 0;
        nr_scanned = sc->nr_scanned;
        get_scan_count(zone, sc, nr, priority);
 
+       blk_start_plug(&plug);
        while (nr[LRU_INACTIVE_ANON] || nr[LRU_ACTIVE_FILE] ||
                                        nr[LRU_INACTIVE_FILE]) {
                for_each_evictable_lru(l) {
@@ -2034,6 +2036,7 @@ restart:
                if (nr_reclaimed >= nr_to_reclaim && priority < DEF_PRIORITY)
                        break;
        }
+       blk_finish_plug(&plug);
        sc->nr_reclaimed += nr_reclaimed;
 
        /*