writeback: optimize periodic bdi thread wakeups

Whe the first inode for a bdi is marked dirty, we wake up the bdi thread which
should take care of the periodic background write-out. However, the write-out
will actually start only 'dirty_writeback_interval' centisecs later, so we can
delay the wake-up.

This change was requested by Nick Piggin who pointed out that if we delay the
wake-up, we weed out 2 unnecessary contex switches, which matters because
'__mark_inode_dirty()' is a hot-path function.

This patch introduces a new function - 'bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed()', which
sets up a timer to wake-up the bdi thread and returns. So the wake-up is
delayed.

We also delete the timer in bdi threads just before writing-back. And
synchronously delete it when unregistering bdi. At the unregister point the bdi
does not have any users, so no one can arm it again.

Since now we take 'bdi->wb_lock' in the timer, which can execute in softirq
context, we have to use 'spin_lock_bh()' for 'bdi->wb_lock'. This patch makes
this change as well.

This patch also moves the 'bdi_wb_init()' function down in the file to avoid
forward-declaration of 'bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed()'.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jaxboe@fusionio.com>
This commit is contained in:
Artem Bityutskiy 2010-07-25 14:29:22 +03:00 committed by Jens Axboe
parent 253c34e9b1
commit 6467716a37
3 changed files with 70 additions and 41 deletions

View file

@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ struct bdi_writeback {
unsigned long last_active; /* last time bdi thread was active */
struct task_struct *task; /* writeback thread */
struct timer_list wakeup_timer; /* used for delayed bdi thread wakeup */
struct list_head b_dirty; /* dirty inodes */
struct list_head b_io; /* parked for writeback */
struct list_head b_more_io; /* parked for more writeback */
@ -105,6 +106,7 @@ void bdi_start_background_writeback(struct backing_dev_info *bdi);
int bdi_writeback_thread(void *data);
int bdi_has_dirty_io(struct backing_dev_info *bdi);
void bdi_arm_supers_timer(void);
void bdi_wakeup_thread_delayed(struct backing_dev_info *bdi);
extern spinlock_t bdi_lock;
extern struct list_head bdi_list;