| Message ID | 20100111131119.GB24241@lst.de |
|---|---|
| State | New |
| Headers | show |
On 01/11/2010 03:11 PM, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > FYI below is the manually applied patch without all the wrapping: > static void virtio_blk_req_complete(VirtIOBlockReq *req, int status) > { > VirtIOBlock *s = req->dev; > @@ -95,6 +98,12 @@ static void virtio_blk_req_complete(Virt > virtqueue_push(s->vq,&req->elem, req->qiov.size + sizeof(*req->in)); > virtio_notify(&s->vdev, s->vq); > > + if (--s->pending == 0) { > + virtio_queue_set_notification(s->vq, 1); > + virtio_blk_handle_output(&s->vdev, s->vq); > + } > + > As Dor points out, the call to virtio_blk_handle_output() wants to be before the test for pending, so we scan the ring as early as possible
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 03:13:53PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote: > As Dor points out, the call to virtio_blk_handle_output() wants to be > before the test for pending, so we scan the ring as early as possible I just reposted the patch in a way that it applies to share the work I did when starting to review it.
On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 03:13:53PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote: > As Dor points out, the call to virtio_blk_handle_output() wants to be > before the test for pending, so we scan the ring as early as possible It could cause a race window where we add an entry to the ring after we run virtio_blk_handle_output, but before re-enabling the notification. But I think my variant of the patch that I just posted should deal with this in an even better way.
On 01/11/2010 07:47 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 03:13:53PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote: > >> As Dor points out, the call to virtio_blk_handle_output() wants to be >> before the test for pending, so we scan the ring as early as possible >> > It could cause a race window where we add an entry to the ring after > we run virtio_blk_handle_output, but before re-enabling the > notification. But I think my variant of the patch that I just posted > should deal with this in an even better way. > When we've disabled notifications, we should use any opportunity we have in userspace to check the rings to see if anything was added. Bottom halves are run at the very end of the event loop which means that they're guaranteed to be the last thing run. idle bottom halves can be rescheduled without causing an infinite loop and do not affect the select timeout (which normal bottom halves do). Regards, Anthony Liguori > >
> Bottom halves are run at the very end of the event loop which means that > they're guaranteed to be the last thing run. idle bottom halves can be > rescheduled without causing an infinite loop and do not affect the > select timeout (which normal bottom halves do). Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs waiting to happen, and should never be used for anything. Paul
On 02/23/2010 08:58 PM, Paul Brook wrote: >> Bottom halves are run at the very end of the event loop which means that >> they're guaranteed to be the last thing run. idle bottom halves can be >> rescheduled without causing an infinite loop and do not affect the >> select timeout (which normal bottom halves do). >> > Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs waiting to > happen, and should never be used for anything. > Idle bottom halves make considerable more sense than the normal bottom halves. The fact that rescheduling a bottom half within a bottom half results in an infinite loop is absurd. It is equally absurd that bottoms halves alter the select timeout. The result of that is that if a bottom half schedules another bottom half, and that bottom half schedules the previous, you get a tight infinite loop. Since bottom halves are used often times deep within functions, the result is very subtle infinite loops (that we've absolutely encountered in the past). A main loop should have only a few characteristics. It should enable timeouts (based on select), it should enable fd event dispatch, and it should allow for idle functions to be registered. There should be no guarantees on when idle functions are executed other than they'll eventually be executed. The way we use "bottom halves" today should be implemented in terms of a relative timeout of 0 or an absolute timeout of now. The fact that we can't do that in our main loop is due to the very strange dependencies deep within various devices on io dispatch ordering. I would love to eliminate this but I've not been able to spend any time on this recently. Regards, Anthony Liguori > Paul >
> > Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs waiting to > > happen, and should never be used for anything. > > Idle bottom halves make considerable more sense than the normal bottom > halves. > > The fact that rescheduling a bottom half within a bottom half results in > an infinite loop is absurd. It is equally absurd that bottoms halves > alter the select timeout. The result of that is that if a bottom half > schedules another bottom half, and that bottom half schedules the > previous, you get a tight infinite loop. Since bottom halves are used > often times deep within functions, the result is very subtle infinite > loops (that we've absolutely encountered in the past). I disagree. The "select timeout" is a completely irrelevant implementation detail. Anything that relies on it is just plain wrong. If you require a delay then you should be using a timer. If scheduling a BH directly then you should expect it to be processed without delay. If a BH reschedules itself (indirectly or indirectly) without useful work occuring then you absolutely should expect an infinite loop. Rescheduling itself after doing useful work should never cause an infinite loop. The only way it can loop inifinitely is if we have infinite amount of work to do, in which case you loose either way. Looping over work via recursive BHs is probably not the most efficient way to do things, but I guess it may sometimes be the simplest in practice. Interaction between multiple BH is slightly trickier. By my reading BH are processed in the order they are created. It may be reasonable to guarantee that BH are processed in the order they are scheduled. However I'm reluctant to even go that far without a good use-case. You could probably come up with arguments for processing them in most-recently-scheduled order. >A main loop should have only a few characteristics. It should enable >timeouts (based on select), it should enable fd event dispatch, and it >should allow for idle functions to be registered. There should be no >guarantees on when idle functions are executed other than they'll >eventually be executed. If you don't provide any guarantees, then surely processing them immediately must be an acceptable implementation. I don't believe there is a useful definition of "idle". All existing uses of qemu_bh_schedule_idle are in fact poorly implemented periodic polling. Furthermore these should not be using periodic polling, they can and should be event driven. They only exist because noone has bothered to fix the old code properly. Having arbitrary 10ms latency on DMA transfers is just plain wrong. >The way we use "bottom halves" today should be implemented in terms of a >relative timeout of 0 or an absolute timeout of now. The fact that we >can't do that in our main loop is due to the very strange dependencies >deep within various devices on io dispatch ordering. I would love to >eliminate this but I've not been able to spend any time on this recently. I don't see how this helps. A self-triggering event with a timeout of "now" is still an infinite loop. Any delay is a bugs in the dispatch loop. "idle" BHs are relying on this bug. Paul
On 02/25/2010 09:06 AM, Paul Brook wrote: >>> Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs waiting to >>> happen, and should never be used for anything. >>> >> Idle bottom halves make considerable more sense than the normal bottom >> halves. >> >> The fact that rescheduling a bottom half within a bottom half results in >> an infinite loop is absurd. It is equally absurd that bottoms halves >> alter the select timeout. The result of that is that if a bottom half >> schedules another bottom half, and that bottom half schedules the >> previous, you get a tight infinite loop. Since bottom halves are used >> often times deep within functions, the result is very subtle infinite >> loops (that we've absolutely encountered in the past). >> > I disagree. The "select timeout" is a completely irrelevant implementation > detail. Anything that relies on it is just plain wrong. No, it's an extremely important detail because its the difference between an infinite loop in an idle function. Very simply, without idle bottom halves, there's no way to implement polling with the main loop. If we dropped idle bottom halves, we would have to add explicit polling back to the main loop. How would you implement polling? > If you require a delay > then you should be using a timer. If scheduling a BH directly then you should > expect it to be processed without delay. > If you need something that doesn't require a delay, schedule a timer with no delay. What's the point of BHs? It's because there's very subtle differences between BHs and timers and because we don't adjust the select timeout for the next timer deadline, there's a race between when we check for timer expiration and when we invoke select. Actually, that's probably fixed now because we've changed the SIGALRM handler to write to a file descriptor to eliminate the signal/select race. I'll give it a try, it might actually work now. > If a BH reschedules itself (indirectly or indirectly) without useful work > occuring then you absolutely should expect an infinite loop. Rescheduling > itself after doing useful work should never cause an infinite loop. The only > way it can loop inifinitely is if we have infinite amount of work to do, in > which case you loose either way. Looping over work via recursive BHs is > probably not the most efficient way to do things, but I guess it may sometimes > be the simplest in practice. > I think the point is getting lost. My contention is that a main loop needs three things 1) an idle callback 2) timers 3) io notification. Bottom halves act both today as a no-delay timer and an idle callback. I agree, that's unfortunate. What we should do is remove idle bottom halves, add proper idle callbacks, and make bottom halves implemented in terms of no-delay timers. > Interaction between multiple BH is slightly trickier. By my reading BH are > processed in the order they are created. It may be reasonable to guarantee > that BH are processed in the order they are scheduled. However I'm reluctant > to even go that far without a good use-case. You could probably come up with > arguments for processing them in most-recently-scheduled order. > It's no different than two timers that happen to fire at the same deadline. You can process in terms of when the timers were created initially or when they were last scheduled. Ultimately, it shouldn't matter to any code that uses them. >> A main loop should have only a few characteristics. It should enable >> timeouts (based on select), it should enable fd event dispatch, and it >> should allow for idle functions to be registered. There should be no >> guarantees on when idle functions are executed other than they'll >> eventually be executed. >> > If you don't provide any guarantees, then surely processing them immediately > must be an acceptable implementation. I don't believe there is a useful > definition of "idle". > idle is necessary to implement polling. You can argue that polling should never be necessary but practically speaking, it almost always is. > All existing uses of qemu_bh_schedule_idle are in fact poorly implemented > periodic polling. Furthermore these should not be using periodic polling, they > can and should be event driven. They only exist because noone has bothered to > fix the old code properly. Having arbitrary 10ms latency on DMA transfers is > just plain wrong. > I agree with you here :-) But there are more legitimate uses of polling. For instance, with virtio-net, we use a timer to implement tx mitigation. It's a huge boost for throughput but it tends to add latency on packet transmission because our notification comes at a longer time. We really just need the notification as a means to re-enable interrupts, not necessarily to slow down packet transmission. So using an idle callback to transmit packets would certainly decrease latency in many cases while still getting the benefits of throughput improvement. >> The way we use "bottom halves" today should be implemented in terms of a >> relative timeout of 0 or an absolute timeout of now. The fact that we >> can't do that in our main loop is due to the very strange dependencies >> deep within various devices on io dispatch ordering. I would love to >> eliminate this but I've not been able to spend any time on this recently. >> > I don't see how this helps. A self-triggering event with a timeout of "now" is > still an infinite loop. Any delay is a bugs in the dispatch loop. "idle" BHs > are relying on this bug. > The main point is that BHs should not be implemented in the actual main loop and that "idle" BHs are really the only type of BHs that should exist as far as the main loop is concerned. s/"idle" BHs/idle callbacks/g and I think we're at a more agreeable place. Regards, Anthony Liguori > Paul >
> Very simply, without idle bottom halves, there's no way to implement > polling with the main loop. If we dropped idle bottom halves, we would > have to add explicit polling back to the main loop. > > How would you implement polling? AFAICS any sort of polling is by definition time based so use a timer. Forcing the user to explicitly decide how often to poll is a feature. If they don't know this then they probably shouldn't be using polling. > > I don't see how this helps. A self-triggering event with a timeout of > > "now" is still an infinite loop. Any delay is a bugs in the dispatch > > loop. "idle" BHs are relying on this bug. > > The main point is that BHs should not be implemented in the actual main > loop and that "idle" BHs are really the only type of BHs that should > exist as far as the main loop is concerned. s/"idle" BHs/idle > callbacks/g and I think we're at a more agreeable place. Part of my difficulty is that I don't have a clear idea what "idle" means. It certainly isn't what qemu_bh_schedule_idle implements. The only vaguely sane definition I can come up with is once the main loop has run out of useful things to do and is about to suspend itself. Typically no significant guest code will be executed between requesting the idle callback and the callback occurring. In an SMP host environment it may be possible for guest CPUs to trigger or observe intermediate events, but this can not be relied upon. Given this definition I'm unclear how useful this would be. A BH is a deferred callback that is used to allow events to be processed. IMO the important feature is that it is a deferred until after the current event has been processed, so avoid a whole set of reentrancy problems. Of course if you misuse them you can cause infinite loops, in the same way that misusing a regular callback will lead to infinite recursion. I'm not sure that replacing BHs with zero interval timers actually gains us anything. From a user(device) perspective I'd be more inclined to make timers trigger a BH when they expire, like the ptimer code. Idle events can then be handled in exactly the same way: the user provides a BH which is triggered the next time the idle event occurs. The exact source of a call to a BH routine from is an implementation detail. The important thing is that they will never be invoked from within or concurrent with any other device callback. Paul
On 02/25/2010 05:06 PM, Paul Brook wrote: >>> Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs waiting to >>> happen, and should never be used for anything. >>> >> Idle bottom halves make considerable more sense than the normal bottom >> halves. >> >> The fact that rescheduling a bottom half within a bottom half results in >> an infinite loop is absurd. It is equally absurd that bottoms halves >> alter the select timeout. The result of that is that if a bottom half >> schedules another bottom half, and that bottom half schedules the >> previous, you get a tight infinite loop. Since bottom halves are used >> often times deep within functions, the result is very subtle infinite >> loops (that we've absolutely encountered in the past). >> > I disagree. The "select timeout" is a completely irrelevant implementation > detail. Anything that relies on it is just plain wrong. If you require a delay > then you should be using a timer. If scheduling a BH directly then you should > expect it to be processed without delay. > I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the iothread essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific threads. There's no "idle" anymore.
On 02/25/2010 11:11 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 02/25/2010 05:06 PM, Paul Brook wrote: >>>> Idle bottom halves (i.e. qemu_bh_schedule_idle) are just bugs >>>> waiting to >>>> happen, and should never be used for anything. >>> Idle bottom halves make considerable more sense than the normal bottom >>> halves. >>> >>> The fact that rescheduling a bottom half within a bottom half >>> results in >>> an infinite loop is absurd. It is equally absurd that bottoms halves >>> alter the select timeout. The result of that is that if a bottom half >>> schedules another bottom half, and that bottom half schedules the >>> previous, you get a tight infinite loop. Since bottom halves are used >>> often times deep within functions, the result is very subtle infinite >>> loops (that we've absolutely encountered in the past). >> I disagree. The "select timeout" is a completely irrelevant >> implementation >> detail. Anything that relies on it is just plain wrong. If you >> require a delay >> then you should be using a timer. If scheduling a BH directly then >> you should >> expect it to be processed without delay. > > I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the iothread > essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific threads. > There's no "idle" anymore. That's a nice idea, but how is io dispatch handled? Is everything synchronous or do we continue to program asynchronously? It's very difficult to mix concepts. I personally don't anticipate per-device threading but rather anticipate re-entrant device models. I would expect all I/O to be dispatched within the I/O thread and the VCPU threads to be able to execute device models simultaneously with the I/O thread. Regards, Anthony Liguori
On 02/25/2010 07:15 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: >> I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the iothread >> essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific threads. >> There's no "idle" anymore. > > > That's a nice idea, but how is io dispatch handled? Is everything > synchronous or do we continue to program asynchronously? Simple stuff can be kept asynchronous, complex stuff (like qcow2) ought to be made synchronous (it uses threads anyway, so we don't lose anything). Stuff like vnc can go either way. > > It's very difficult to mix concepts. We're complicated enough to have conflicting requirements and a large code base with its own inertia, so no choice really. > I personally don't anticipate per-device threading but rather > anticipate re-entrant device models. I would expect all I/O to be > dispatched within the I/O thread and the VCPU threads to be able to > execute device models simultaneously with the I/O thread. That means long-running operations on the iothread can lock out other completions. Candidates for own threads are: - live migration - block format drivers (except linux-aio, perhaps have a thread for the aio completion handler) - vnc - sdl - sound? - hotplug, esp. memory Each such thread could run the same loop as the iothread. Any pollable fd or timer would be associated with a thread, so things continue as normal more or less. Unassociated objects continue with the main iothread.
On Thu, 25 Feb 2010, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 02/25/2010 07:15 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: > > > I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the iothread > > > essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific threads. > > > There's no "idle" anymore. > > > > > > That's a nice idea, but how is io dispatch handled? Is everything > > synchronous or do we continue to program asynchronously? > > Simple stuff can be kept asynchronous, complex stuff (like qcow2) ought to be > made synchronous (it uses threads anyway, so we don't lose anything). Stuff > like vnc can go either way. > > > > > It's very difficult to mix concepts. > > We're complicated enough to have conflicting requirements and a large code > base with its own inertia, so no choice really. > > > I personally don't anticipate per-device threading but rather anticipate > > re-entrant device models. I would expect all I/O to be dispatched within > > the I/O thread and the VCPU threads to be able to execute device models > > simultaneously with the I/O thread. > > That means long-running operations on the iothread can lock out other > completions. > > Candidates for own threads are: > - live migration > - block format drivers (except linux-aio, perhaps have a thread for the aio > completion handler) > - vnc > - sdl > - sound? Had(ve?) that on a private branch, there's no point in that complication. > - hotplug, esp. memory > > Each such thread could run the same loop as the iothread. Any pollable fd or > timer would be associated with a thread, so things continue as normal more or > less. Unassociated objects continue with the main iothread. > >
On 02/25/2010 11:33 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: > On 02/25/2010 07:15 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: >>> I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the iothread >>> essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific threads. >>> There's no "idle" anymore. >> >> >> That's a nice idea, but how is io dispatch handled? Is everything >> synchronous or do we continue to program asynchronously? > > Simple stuff can be kept asynchronous, complex stuff (like qcow2) > ought to be made synchronous (it uses threads anyway, so we don't lose > anything). Stuff like vnc can go either way. We've discussed this before and I still contend that threads do not make qcow2 any simpler. >> >> It's very difficult to mix concepts. > > We're complicated enough to have conflicting requirements and a large > code base with its own inertia, so no choice really. > >> I personally don't anticipate per-device threading but rather >> anticipate re-entrant device models. I would expect all I/O to be >> dispatched within the I/O thread and the VCPU threads to be able to >> execute device models simultaneously with the I/O thread. > > That means long-running operations on the iothread can lock out other > completions. > > Candidates for own threads are: > - live migration > - block format drivers (except linux-aio, perhaps have a thread for > the aio completion handler) > - vnc > - sdl > - sound? > - hotplug, esp. memory > > Each such thread could run the same loop as the iothread. Any > pollable fd or timer would be associated with a thread, so things > continue as normal more or less. Unassociated objects continue with > the main iothread. Is the point latency or increasing available CPU resources? If the device models are re-entrant, that reduces a ton of the demand on the qemu_mutex which means that IO thread can run uncontended. While we have evidence that the VCPU threads and IO threads are competing with each other today, I don't think we have any evidence to suggest that the IO thread is self-starving itself with long running events. With the device model, I'd like to see us move toward a very well defined API for each device to use. Part of the reason for this is to limit the scope of the devices in such a way that we can enforce this at compile time. Then we can introduce locking within devices with some level of guarantee that we've covered the API devices are actually consuming. For host services though, it's much more difficult to isolate them like this. I'm not necessarily claiming that this will never be the right thing to do, but I don't think we really have the evidence today to suggest that we should focus on this in the short term. Regards, Anthony Liguori
On 02/25/2010 09:55 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: > On 02/25/2010 11:33 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: >> On 02/25/2010 07:15 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: >>>> I agree. Further, once we fine-grain device threading, the >>>> iothread essentially disappears and is replaced by device-specific >>>> threads. There's no "idle" anymore. >>> >>> >>> That's a nice idea, but how is io dispatch handled? Is everything >>> synchronous or do we continue to program asynchronously? >> >> Simple stuff can be kept asynchronous, complex stuff (like qcow2) >> ought to be made synchronous (it uses threads anyway, so we don't >> lose anything). Stuff like vnc can go either way. > > We've discussed this before and I still contend that threads do not > make qcow2 any simpler. qcow2 is still not fully asynchronous. All the other format drivers (except raw) are fully synchronous. If we had a threaded infrastructure, we could convert them all in a day. As it is, you can only use the other block format drivers in 'qemu-img convert'. >> >> Each such thread could run the same loop as the iothread. Any >> pollable fd or timer would be associated with a thread, so things >> continue as normal more or less. Unassociated objects continue with >> the main iothread. > > Is the point latency or increasing available CPU resources? Yes. > If the device models are re-entrant, that reduces a ton of the demand > on the qemu_mutex which means that IO thread can run uncontended. > While we have evidence that the VCPU threads and IO threads are > competing with each other today, I don't think we have any evidence to > suggest that the IO thread is self-starving itself with long running > events. I agree we have no evidence and that this is all speculation. But consider a 64-vcpu guest, it has a 1:64 ratio of vcpu time (initiations) to iothread time (completions). If each vcpu generates 5000 initiations per second, the iothread needs to handle 320,000 completions per second. At that rate you will see some internal competition. That thread will also have a hard time shuffling data since every completion's data will reside in the wrong cpu cache. Note, an alternative to multiple iothreads is to move completion handling back to vcpus, provided we can steer the handler close to the guest completion handler. > > With the device model, I'd like to see us move toward a very well > defined API for each device to use. Part of the reason for this is to > limit the scope of the devices in such a way that we can enforce this > at compile time. Then we can introduce locking within devices with > some level of guarantee that we've covered the API devices are > actually consuming. Yes. On the other hand, the shape of the API will be influenced by the locking model, so we'll have to take iterative steps, unless someone comes out with a brilliant design. > > For host services though, it's much more difficult to isolate them > like this. What do you mean by host services? > I'm not necessarily claiming that this will never be the right thing > to do, but I don't think we really have the evidence today to suggest > that we should focus on this in the short term. Agreed. We will start to see evidence (one way or the other) as fully loaded 64-vcpu guests are benchmarked. Another driver may be real-time guests; if a timer can be deferred by some block device initiation or completion, then we can say goodbye to any realtime guarantees we want to make.
On 02/26/2010 02:47 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: > qcow2 is still not fully asynchronous. All the other format drivers > (except raw) are fully synchronous. If we had a threaded > infrastructure, we could convert them all in a day. As it is, you can > only use the other block format drivers in 'qemu-img convert'. I've got a healthy amount of scepticism that it's that easy. But I'm happy to consider patches :-) > >>> >>> Each such thread could run the same loop as the iothread. Any >>> pollable fd or timer would be associated with a thread, so things >>> continue as normal more or less. Unassociated objects continue with >>> the main iothread. >> >> Is the point latency or increasing available CPU resources? > > Yes. > >> If the device models are re-entrant, that reduces a ton of the demand >> on the qemu_mutex which means that IO thread can run uncontended. >> While we have evidence that the VCPU threads and IO threads are >> competing with each other today, I don't think we have any evidence >> to suggest that the IO thread is self-starving itself with long >> running events. > > I agree we have no evidence and that this is all speculation. But > consider a 64-vcpu guest, it has a 1:64 ratio of vcpu time > (initiations) to iothread time (completions). If each vcpu generates > 5000 initiations per second, the iothread needs to handle 320,000 > completions per second. At that rate you will see some internal > competition. That thread will also have a hard time shuffling data > since every completion's data will reside in the wrong cpu cache. Ultimately, it depends on what you're optimizing for. If you've got a 64-vcpu guest on a 128-way box, then sure, we want to have 64 IO threads because that will absolutely increase throughput. But realistically, it's more likely that if you've got a 64-vcpu guest, you're on a 1024-way box and you've got 64 guests running at once. Having 64 IO threads per VM means you've got 4k threads floating. It's still just as likely that one completion will get delayed by something less important. Now with all of these threads on a box like this, you get nasty NUMA interactions too. The difference between the two models is that with threads, we rely on pre-emption to enforce fairness and the Linux scheduler to perform scheduling. With a single IO thread, we're determining execution order and priority. A lot of main loops have a notion of priority for timer and idle callbacks. For something that is latency sensitive, you absolutely could introduce the concept of priority for bottom halves. It would ensure that a +1 priority bottom half would get scheduled before handling any lower priority I/O/BHs. > Note, an alternative to multiple iothreads is to move completion > handling back to vcpus, provided we can steer the handler close to the > guest completion handler. Looking at something like linux-aio, I think we might actually want to do that. We can submit the request from the VCPU thread and we can certainly program the signal to get delivered to that VCPU thread. Maintaining affinity for the request is likely a benefit. >> >> For host services though, it's much more difficult to isolate them >> like this. > > What do you mean by host services? Things like VNC and live migration. Things that aren't directly related to a guest's activity. One model I can imagine is to continue to relegate these things to a single IO thread, but then move device driven callbacks either back to the originating thread or to a dedicated device callback thread. Host services generally have a much lower priority. >> I'm not necessarily claiming that this will never be the right thing >> to do, but I don't think we really have the evidence today to suggest >> that we should focus on this in the short term. > > Agreed. We will start to see evidence (one way or the other) as fully > loaded 64-vcpu guests are benchmarked. Another driver may be > real-time guests; if a timer can be deferred by some block device > initiation or completion, then we can say goodbye to any realtime > guarantees we want to make. I'm wary of making decisions based on performance of a 64-vcpu guest. It's an important workload to characterize because it's an extreme case but I think 64 1-vcpu guests will continue to be significantly more important than 1 64-vcpu guest. Regards, Anthony Liguori
On 02/26/2010 04:36 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: > On 02/26/2010 02:47 AM, Avi Kivity wrote: >> qcow2 is still not fully asynchronous. All the other format drivers >> (except raw) are fully synchronous. If we had a threaded >> infrastructure, we could convert them all in a day. As it is, you >> can only use the other block format drivers in 'qemu-img convert'. > > I've got a healthy amount of scepticism that it's that easy. But I'm > happy to consider patches :-) I'd be happy to have time to write them. > >>> If the device models are re-entrant, that reduces a ton of the >>> demand on the qemu_mutex which means that IO thread can run >>> uncontended. While we have evidence that the VCPU threads and IO >>> threads are competing with each other today, I don't think we have >>> any evidence to suggest that the IO thread is self-starving itself >>> with long running events. >> >> I agree we have no evidence and that this is all speculation. But >> consider a 64-vcpu guest, it has a 1:64 ratio of vcpu time >> (initiations) to iothread time (completions). If each vcpu generates >> 5000 initiations per second, the iothread needs to handle 320,000 >> completions per second. At that rate you will see some internal >> competition. That thread will also have a hard time shuffling data >> since every completion's data will reside in the wrong cpu cache. > > Ultimately, it depends on what you're optimizing for. If you've got a > 64-vcpu guest on a 128-way box, then sure, we want to have 64 IO > threads because that will absolutely increase throughput. > > But realistically, it's more likely that if you've got a 64-vcpu > guest, you're on a 1024-way box and you've got 64 guests running at > once. Having 64 IO threads per VM means you've got 4k threads > floating. It's still just as likely that one completion will get > delayed by something less important. Now with all of these threads on > a box like this, you get nasty NUMA interactions too. I'm not suggesting to scale out - the number of vcpus (across all guests) will usually be higher than the number of cpus. But if you have multiple device threads, the scheduler has flexibility in placing them around and filling bubbles. A single heavily loaded iothread is more difficult. > The difference between the two models is that with threads, we rely on > pre-emption to enforce fairness and the Linux scheduler to perform > scheduling. With a single IO thread, we're determining execution > order and priority. We could define priorities with multiple threads as well (using thread priorities), and we'd never have a short task delayed behind a long task, unless the host is out of resources. > > A lot of main loops have a notion of priority for timer and idle > callbacks. For something that is latency sensitive, you absolutely > could introduce the concept of priority for bottom halves. It would > ensure that a +1 priority bottom half would get scheduled before > handling any lower priority I/O/BHs. What if it becomes available after the low prio task has started to run? > >> Note, an alternative to multiple iothreads is to move completion >> handling back to vcpus, provided we can steer the handler close to >> the guest completion handler. > > Looking at something like linux-aio, I think we might actually want to > do that. We can submit the request from the VCPU thread and we can > certainly program the signal to get delivered to that VCPU thread. > Maintaining affinity for the request is likely a benefit. Likely to benefit when we have multiqueue virtio. > >>> >>> For host services though, it's much more difficult to isolate them >>> like this. >> >> What do you mean by host services? > > Things like VNC and live migration. Things that aren't directly > related to a guest's activity. One model I can imagine is to continue > to relegate these things to a single IO thread, but then move device > driven callbacks either back to the originating thread or to a > dedicated device callback thread. Host services generally have a much > lower priority. Or just 'a thread'. Nothing prevents vnc or live migration from running in a thread, using the current code. > >>> I'm not necessarily claiming that this will never be the right thing >>> to do, but I don't think we really have the evidence today to >>> suggest that we should focus on this in the short term. >> >> Agreed. We will start to see evidence (one way or the other) as >> fully loaded 64-vcpu guests are benchmarked. Another driver may be >> real-time guests; if a timer can be deferred by some block device >> initiation or completion, then we can say goodbye to any realtime >> guarantees we want to make. > > I'm wary of making decisions based on performance of a 64-vcpu guest. > It's an important workload to characterize because it's an extreme > case but I think 64 1-vcpu guests will continue to be significantly > more important than 1 64-vcpu guest. Agreed. 64-vcpu guests will make the headlines and marketing checklists, though.
Index: qemu/hw/virtio-blk.c =================================================================== --- qemu.orig/hw/virtio-blk.c 2010-01-11 14:05:09.619254004 +0100 +++ qemu/hw/virtio-blk.c 2010-01-11 14:06:54.385013004 +0100 @@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ typedef struct VirtIOBlock char serial_str[BLOCK_SERIAL_STRLEN + 1]; QEMUBH *bh; size_t config_size; + unsigned int pending; } VirtIOBlock; static VirtIOBlock *to_virtio_blk(VirtIODevice *vdev) @@ -87,6 +88,8 @@ typedef struct VirtIOBlockReq struct VirtIOBlockReq *next; } VirtIOBlockReq; +static void virtio_blk_handle_output(VirtIODevice *vdev, VirtQueue *vq); + static void virtio_blk_req_complete(VirtIOBlockReq *req, int status) { VirtIOBlock *s = req->dev; @@ -95,6 +98,12 @@ static void virtio_blk_req_complete(Virt virtqueue_push(s->vq, &req->elem, req->qiov.size + sizeof(*req->in)); virtio_notify(&s->vdev, s->vq); + if (--s->pending == 0) { + virtio_queue_set_notification(s->vq, 1); + virtio_blk_handle_output(&s->vdev, s->vq); + } + + qemu_free(req); } @@ -340,6 +349,9 @@ static void virtio_blk_handle_output(Vir exit(1); } + if (++s->pending == 1) + virtio_queue_set_notification(s->vq, 0); + req->out = (void *)req->elem.out_sg[0].iov_base; req->in = (void *)req->elem.in_sg[req->elem.in_num - 1].iov_base;