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@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Every bio that is mapped by the target is referred to the policy.
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The policy can return a simple HIT or MISS or issue a migration.
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Currently there's no way for the policy to issue background work,
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-e.g. to start writing back dirty blocks that are going to be evicte
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+e.g. to start writing back dirty blocks that are going to be evicted
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soon.
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Because we map bios, rather than requests it's easy for the policy
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@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ with the multiqueue (mq) policy.
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The smq policy (vs mq) offers the promise of less memory utilization,
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improved performance and increased adaptability in the face of changing
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-workloads. SMQ also does not have any cumbersome tuning knobs.
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+workloads. smq also does not have any cumbersome tuning knobs.
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Users may switch from "mq" to "smq" simply by appropriately reloading a
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DM table that is using the cache target. Doing so will cause all of the
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@@ -57,47 +57,45 @@ degrade slightly until smq recalculates the origin device's hotspots
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that should be cached.
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Memory usage:
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-The mq policy uses a lot of memory; 88 bytes per cache block on a 64
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+The mq policy used a lot of memory; 88 bytes per cache block on a 64
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bit machine.
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-SMQ uses 28bit indexes to implement it's data structures rather than
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+smq uses 28bit indexes to implement it's data structures rather than
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pointers. It avoids storing an explicit hit count for each block. It
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-has a 'hotspot' queue rather than a pre cache which uses a quarter of
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+has a 'hotspot' queue, rather than a pre-cache, which uses a quarter of
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the entries (each hotspot block covers a larger area than a single
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cache block).
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-All these mean smq uses ~25bytes per cache block. Still a lot of
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+All this means smq uses ~25bytes per cache block. Still a lot of
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memory, but a substantial improvement nontheless.
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Level balancing:
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-MQ places entries in different levels of the multiqueue structures
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-based on their hit count (~ln(hit count)). This means the bottom
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-levels generally have the most entries, and the top ones have very
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-few. Having unbalanced levels like this reduces the efficacy of the
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+mq placed entries in different levels of the multiqueue structures
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+based on their hit count (~ln(hit count)). This meant the bottom
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+levels generally had the most entries, and the top ones had very
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+few. Having unbalanced levels like this reduced the efficacy of the
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multiqueue.
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-SMQ does not maintain a hit count, instead it swaps hit entries with
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-the least recently used entry from the level above. The over all
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+smq does not maintain a hit count, instead it swaps hit entries with
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+the least recently used entry from the level above. The overall
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ordering being a side effect of this stochastic process. With this
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scheme we can decide how many entries occupy each multiqueue level,
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resulting in better promotion/demotion decisions.
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Adaptability:
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-The MQ policy maintains a hit count for each cache block. For a
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+The mq policy maintained a hit count for each cache block. For a
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different block to get promoted to the cache it's hit count has to
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-exceed the lowest currently in the cache. This means it can take a
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+exceed the lowest currently in the cache. This meant it could take a
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long time for the cache to adapt between varying IO patterns.
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-Periodically degrading the hit counts could help with this, but I
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-haven't found a nice general solution.
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-SMQ doesn't maintain hit counts, so a lot of this problem just goes
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+smq doesn't maintain hit counts, so a lot of this problem just goes
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away. In addition it tracks performance of the hotspot queue, which
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is used to decide which blocks to promote. If the hotspot queue is
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performing badly then it starts moving entries more quickly between
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levels. This lets it adapt to new IO patterns very quickly.
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Performance:
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-Testing SMQ shows substantially better performance than MQ.
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+Testing smq shows substantially better performance than mq.
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cleaner
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-------
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