block, bfq: inject I/O to underutilized actuators

The main service scheme of BFQ for sync I/O is serving one sync
bfq_queue at a time, for a while. In particular, BFQ enforces this
scheme when it deems the latter necessary to boost throughput or
to preserve service guarantees. Unfortunately, when BFQ enforces
this policy, only one actuator at a time gets served for a while,
because each bfq_queue contains I/O only for one actuator. The
other actuators may remain underutilized.

Actually, BFQ may serve (inject) extra I/O, taken from other
bfq_queues, in parallel with that of the in-service queue. This
injection mechanism may provide the ground for dealing also with
the above actuator-underutilization problem. Yet BFQ does not take
the actuator load into account when choosing which queue to pick
extra I/O from. In addition, BFQ may happen to inject extra I/O
only when the in-service queue is temporarily empty.

In view of these facts, this commit extends the
injection mechanism in such a way that the latter:
(1) takes into account also the actuator load;
(2) checks such a load on each dispatch, and injects I/O for an
    underutilized actuator, if there is one and there is I/O for it.

To perform the check in (2), this commit introduces a load
threshold, currently set to 4.  A linear scan of each actuator is
performed, until an actuator is found for which the following two
conditions hold: the load of the actuator is below the threshold,
and there is at least one non-in-service queue that contains I/O
for that actuator. If such a pair (actuator, queue) is found, then
the head request of that queue is returned for dispatch, instead
of the head request of the in-service queue.

We have set the threshold, empirically, to the minimum possible
value for which an actuator is fully utilized, or close to be
fully utilized. By doing so, injected I/O 'steals' as few
drive-queue slots as possibile to the in-service queue. This
reduces as much as possible the probability that the service of
I/O from the in-service bfq_queue gets delayed because of slot
exhaustion, i.e., because all the slots of the drive queue are
filled with I/O injected from other queues (NCQ provides for 32
slots).

This new mechanism also counters actuator underutilization in the
case of asymmetric configurations of bfq_queues. Namely if there
are few bfq_queues containing I/O for some actuators and many
bfq_queues containing I/O for other actuators. Or if the
bfq_queues containing I/O for some actuators have lower weights
than the other bfq_queues.

Reviewed-by: Damien Le Moal <damien.lemoal@opensource.wdc.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Davide Zini <davidezini2@gmail.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230103145503.71712-8-paolo.valente@linaro.org
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>

1 files changed, 36 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/block/bfq-iosched.h b/block/bfq-iosched.h
index ba2ece8b6646..2b4893a68b43 100644
--- a/block/bfq-iosched.h
+++ b/block/bfq-iosched.h
@@ -590,7 +590,12 @@ struct bfq_data {
 	/* number of queued requests */
 	int queued;
 	/* number of requests dispatched and waiting for completion */
-	int rq_in_driver;
+	int tot_rq_in_driver;
+	/*
+	 * number of requests dispatched and waiting for completion
+	 * for each actuator
+	 */
+	int rq_in_driver[BFQ_MAX_ACTUATORS];
 
 	/* true if the device is non rotational and performs queueing */
 	bool nonrot_with_queueing;
@@ -684,8 +689,13 @@ struct bfq_data {
 	/* maximum budget allotted to a bfq_queue before rescheduling */
 	int bfq_max_budget;
 
-	/* list of all the bfq_queues active on the device */
-	struct list_head active_list;
+	/*
+	 * List of all the bfq_queues active for a specific actuator
+	 * on the device. Keeping active queues separate on a
+	 * per-actuator basis helps implementing per-actuator
+	 * injection more efficiently.
+	 */
+	struct list_head active_list[BFQ_MAX_ACTUATORS];
 	/* list of all the bfq_queues idle on the device */
 	struct list_head idle_list;
 
@@ -821,6 +831,29 @@ struct bfq_data {
 	sector_t sector[BFQ_MAX_ACTUATORS];
 	sector_t nr_sectors[BFQ_MAX_ACTUATORS];
 	struct blk_independent_access_range ia_ranges[BFQ_MAX_ACTUATORS];
+
+	/*
+	 * If the number of I/O requests queued in the device for a
+	 * given actuator is below next threshold, then the actuator
+	 * is deemed as underutilized. If this condition is found to
+	 * hold for some actuator upon a dispatch, but (i) the
+	 * in-service queue does not contain I/O for that actuator,
+	 * while (ii) some other queue does contain I/O for that
+	 * actuator, then the head I/O request of the latter queue is
+	 * returned (injected), instead of the head request of the
+	 * currently in-service queue.
+	 *
+	 * We set the threshold, empirically, to the minimum possible
+	 * value for which an actuator is fully utilized, or close to
+	 * be fully utilized. By doing so, injected I/O 'steals' as
+	 * few drive-queue slots as possibile to the in-service
+	 * queue. This reduces as much as possible the probability
+	 * that the service of I/O from the in-service bfq_queue gets
+	 * delayed because of slot exhaustion, i.e., because all the
+	 * slots of the drive queue are filled with I/O injected from
+	 * other queues (NCQ provides for 32 slots).
+	 */
+	unsigned int actuator_load_threshold;
 };
 
 enum bfqq_state_flags {