null_blk: set a separate timer for each command

For the Timer IRQ mode (i.e., when command completions are delayed),
there is one timer for each CPU. Each of these timers
. has a completion queue associated with it, containing all the
  command completions to be executed when the timer fires;
. is set, and a new completion-to-execute is inserted into its
  completion queue, every time the dispatch code for a new command
  happens to be executed on the CPU related to the timer.

This implies that, if the dispatch of a new command happens to be
executed on a CPU whose timer has already been set, but has not yet
fired, then the timer is set again, to the completion time of the
newly arrived command. When the timer eventually fires, all its queued
completions are executed.

This way of handling delayed command completions entails the following
problem: if more than one command completion is inserted into the
queue of a timer before the timer fires, then the expiration time for
the timer is moved forward every time each of these completions is
enqueued. As a consequence, only the last completion enqueued enjoys a
correct execution time, while all previous completions are unjustly
delayed until the last completion is executed (and at that time they
are executed all together).

Specifically, if all the above completions are enqueued almost at the
same time, then the problem is negligible. On the opposite end, if
every completion is enqueued a while after the previous completion was
enqueued (in the extreme case, it is enqueued only right before the
timer would have expired), then every enqueued completion, except for
the last one, experiences an inflated delay, proportional to the number
of completions enqueued after it. In the end, commands, and thus I/O
requests, may be completed at an arbitrarily lower rate than the
desired one.

This commit addresses this issue by replacing per-CPU timers with
per-command timers, i.e., by associating an individual timer with each
command.

Signed-off-by: Paolo Valente <paolo.valente@unimore.it>
Signed-off-by: Arianna Avanzini <avanzini@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
1 file changed