[PATCH] block: virtio_blk: don't hold spin lock during world switch

From: Ming Lei
Date: Thu May 29 2014 - 22:49:50 EST


Firstly, it isn't necessary to hold lock of vblk->vq_lock
when notifying hypervisor about queued I/O.

Secondly, virtqueue_notify() will cause world switch and
it may take long time on some hypervisors(such as, qemu-arm),
so it isn't good to hold the lock and block other vCPUs.

On arm64 quad core VM(qemu-kvm), the patch can increase I/O
performance a lot with VIRTIO_RING_F_EVENT_IDX enabled:
- without the patch: 14K IOPS
- with the patch: 34K IOPS

fio script:
[global]
direct=1
bsrange=4k-4k
timeout=10
numjobs=4
ioengine=libaio
iodepth=64

filename=/dev/vdc
group_reporting=1

[f1]
rw=randread

Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: virtualization@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Ming Lei <ming.lei@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/block/virtio_blk.c | 9 ++++++---
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c b/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c
index 9f340fa..a6f5424 100644
--- a/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c
+++ b/drivers/block/virtio_blk.c
@@ -162,6 +162,7 @@ static int virtio_queue_rq(struct blk_mq_hw_ctx *hctx, struct request *req)
unsigned int num;
const bool last = (req->cmd_flags & REQ_END) != 0;
int err;
+ bool notify = false;

BUG_ON(req->nr_phys_segments + 2 > vblk->sg_elems);

@@ -214,10 +215,12 @@ static int virtio_queue_rq(struct blk_mq_hw_ctx *hctx, struct request *req)
return BLK_MQ_RQ_QUEUE_ERROR;
}

- if (last)
- virtqueue_kick(vblk->vq);
-
+ if (last && virtqueue_kick_prepare(vblk->vq))
+ notify = true;
spin_unlock_irqrestore(&vblk->vq_lock, flags);
+
+ if (notify)
+ virtqueue_notify(vblk->vq);
return BLK_MQ_RQ_QUEUE_OK;
}

--
1.7.9.5

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