Re: [PATCH v7 3/3] mm: kick writeback flusher for IOCB_DONTCACHE with targeted dirty tracking

[IBM]

Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> dontcache-bench results (same host, T6F_SKL_1920GBF, 251 GiB RAM,
> xfs on NVMe, fio io_uring):
>
> Buffered and direct I/O paths are unaffected by this patchset. All
> improvements are confined to the dontcache path:
>
> Single-stream throughput (MB/s):
>                         Before    After    Change
>   seq-write/dontcache      298      897    +201%
>   rand-write/dontcache     131      236     +80%
>
> Tail latency improvements (seq-write/dontcache):
>   p99:    135,266 us  ->  23,986 us   (-82%)
>   p99.9: 8,925,479 us ->  28,443 us   (-99.7%)
>
> Multi-writer (4 jobs, sequential write):
>                                 Before    After    Change
>   dontcache aggregate (MB/s)     2,529    4,532     +79%
>   dontcache p99 (us)             8,553    1,002     -88%
>   dontcache p99.9 (us)         109,314    1,057     -99%
>
>   Dontcache multi-writer throughput now matches buffered (4,532 vs
>   4,616 MB/s).
>
> 32-file write (Axboe test):
>                                 Before    After    Change
>   dontcache aggregate (MB/s)     1,548    3,499    +126%
>   dontcache p99 (us)            10,170      602     -94%
>   Peak dirty pages (MB)          1,837      213     -88%
>
>   Dontcache now reaches 81% of buffered throughput (was 35%).
>
> Competing writers (dontcache vs buffered, separate files):
>                                 Before    After
>   buffered writer                  868      433 MB/s
>   dontcache writer                 415      433 MB/s
>   Aggregate                      1,284      866 MB/s
>
>   Previously the buffered writer starved the dontcache writer 2:1.
>   With per-bdi_writeback tracking, both writers now receive equal
>   bandwidth. The aggregate matches the buffered-vs-buffered baseline
>   (863 MB/s), indicating fair sharing regardless of I/O mode.
>
>   The dontcache writer's p99.9 latency collapsed from 119 ms to
>   33 ms (-73%), eliminating the severe periodic stalls seen in the
>   baseline. Both writers now share identical latency profiles,
>   matching the buffered-vs-buffered pattern.
>
> The per-bdi_writeback dirty tracking dramatically reduces peak dirty
> pages in dontcache workloads, with the 32-file test dropping from
> 1.8 GB to 213 MB. Dontcache sequential write throughput triples and
> multi-writer throughput reaches parity with buffered I/O, with tail
> latencies collapsing by 1-2 orders of magnitude.
>
Thanks for also considering multiple request for performance numbers
into account, this indeed is a nice improvement overall to
RWF_DONTCACHE.

With Christian simplification - the patch looks good to me.
So, please feel free to add:

Reviewed-by: Ritesh Harjani (IBM) <ritesh.list@xxxxxxxxx>