tree 33847b1e267895ea58c2399c06cdd23365c7dc73
parent 336c3d8ce771608815b65bcfa27a17a83b297328
author Kiyoshi Ueda <k-ueda@ct.jp.nec.com> 1222870335 +0200
committer Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com> 1223535380 +0200

block: add lld busy state exporting interface

This patch adds an new interface, blk_lld_busy(), to check lld's
busy state from the block layer.
blk_lld_busy() calls down into low-level drivers for the checking
if the drivers set q->lld_busy_fn() using blk_queue_lld_busy().

This resolves a performance problem on request stacking devices below.

Some drivers like scsi mid layer stop dispatching request when
they detect busy state on its low-level device like host/target/device.
It allows other requests to stay in the I/O scheduler's queue
for a chance of merging.

Request stacking drivers like request-based dm should follow
the same logic.
However, there is no generic interface for the stacked device
to check if the underlying device(s) are busy.
If the request stacking driver dispatches and submits requests to
the busy underlying device, the requests will stay in
the underlying device's queue without a chance of merging.
This causes performance problem on burst I/O load.

With this patch, busy state of the underlying device is exported
via q->lld_busy_fn().  So the request stacking driver can check it
and stop dispatching requests if busy.

The underlying device driver must return the busy state appropriately:
    1: when the device driver can't process requests immediately.
    0: when the device driver can process requests immediately,
       including abnormal situations where the device driver needs
       to kill all requests.

Signed-off-by: Kiyoshi Ueda <k-ueda@ct.jp.nec.com>
Signed-off-by: Jun'ichi Nomura <j-nomura@ce.jp.nec.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>