tree 6b6d96208f08bc394c8e64efed6767b9a95e7a6d
parent 61b7cbdba2f3c588a0cf3db574c562805454b09b
author Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com> 1245191498 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1245206850 -0700

readahead: enforce full sync mmap readahead size

Now that we do readahead for sequential mmap reads, here is a simple
evaluation of the impacts, and one further optimization.

It's an NFS-root debian desktop system, readahead size = 60 pages.
The numbers are grabbed after a fresh boot into console.

approach        pgmajfault      RA miss ratio   mmap IO count   avg IO size(pages)
   A            383             31.6%           383             11
   B            225             32.4%           390             11
   C            224             32.6%           307             13

case A: mmap sync/async readahead disabled
case B: mmap sync/async readahead enabled, with enforced full async readahead size
case C: mmap sync/async readahead enabled, with enforced full sync/async readahead size
or:
A = vanilla 2.6.30-rc1
B = A plus mmap readahead
C = B plus this patch

The numbers show that
- there are good possibilities for random mmap reads to trigger readahead
- 'pgmajfault' is reduced by 1/3, due to the _async_ nature of readahead
- case C can further reduce IO count by 1/4
- readahead miss ratios are not quite affected

The theory is
- readahead is _good_ for clustered random reads, and can perform
  _better_ than readaround because they could be _async_.
- async readahead size is guaranteed to be larger than readaround
  size, and they are _async_, hence will mostly behave better
However for B
- sync readahead size could be smaller than readaround size, hence may
  make things worse by produce more smaller IOs
which will be fixed by this patch.

Final conclusion:
- mmap readahead reduced major faults by 1/3 and no obvious overheads;
- mmap io can be further reduced by 1/4 with this patch.

Signed-off-by: Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>