zfsonlinux/zfs — pull request #1327 by nedbass (2013-02-28 18:37:33+00:00)
Title: Illumos #3581 spa_zio_taskq[ZIO_TYPE_FREE][ZIO_TASKQ_ISSUE]->tq_lock con...

...tention

3581 spa_zio_taskq[ZIO_TYPE_FREE][ZIO_TASKQ_ISSUE]->tq_lock is piping hot

Notes for Linux port:

Earlier commit 08d08eb reduced contention on this taskq lock by simply
reducing the number of z_fr_iss threads from 100 to one-per-CPU. We
also optimized the taskq implementation in zfsonlinux/spl@3c6ed54.
These changes significantly improved unlink performance to acceptable
levels.

This patch further reduces time spent spinning on this lock by
randomly dispatching the work items over multiple independent task
queues. The Illumos ZFS developers stated that this lock contention
only arose after "3329 spa_sync() spends 10-20% of its time in
spa_free_sync_cb()" was landed. It's not clear if 3329 affects the
Linux port or not. I didn't see spa_free_sync_cb() show up in
oprofile sessions while unlinking large files, but I may just not have
used the right test case.

I tested unlinking a 1 TB of data with and without the patch and
didn't observe a meaningful difference in elapsed time. However,
oprofile showed that the percent time spent in taskq_thread() was
reduced from about 16% to about 5%. Aside from a possible slight
performance benefit this may be worth landing if only for the sake of
maintaining consistency with upstream.

References:
https://illumos.org/issues/3581
illumos/illumos-gate@ec94d32

https://illumos.org/issues/3329
illumos/illumos-gate@01f55e4

Reviewed by: Matthew Ahrens
Reviewed by: George Wilson
Reviewed by: Christopher Siden
Reviewed by: Gordon Ross
Approved by: Richard Lowe

Ported-by: Ned Bass