To maximise responsiveness, BFQ raises the weight, and performs device
idling, for bfq_queues associated with processes deemed as
interactive. In particular, weight raising has a maximum duration,
equal to the time needed to start a large application. If a
weight-raised process goes on doing I/O beyond this maximum duration,
it loses weight-raising.

This mechanism is evidently vulnerable to the following false
positives: I/O-bound applications that will go on doing I/O for much
longer than the duration of weight-raising. These applications have
basically no benefit from being weight-raised at the beginning of
their I/O. On the opposite end, while being weight-raised, these
applications
a) unjustly steal throughput to applications that may truly need
low latency;
b) make BFQ uselessly perform device idling; device idling results
in loss of device throughput with most flash-based storage, and may
increase latencies when used purposelessly.

This commit adds a countermeasure to reduce both the above
problems. To introduce this countermeasure, we provide the following
extra piece of information (full details in the comments added by this
commit). During the start-up of the large application used as a
reference to set the duration of weight-raising, involved processes
transfer at most ~110K sectors each. Accordingly, a process initially
deemed as interactive has no right to be weight-raised any longer,
once transferred 110K sectors or more.

Basing on this consideration, this commit early-ends weight-raising
for a bfq_queue if the latter happens to have received an amount of
service at least equal to 110K sectors (actually, a little bit more,
to keep a safety margin). I/O-bound applications that reach a high
throughput, such as file copy, get to this threshold much before the
allowed weight-raising period finishes. Thus this early ending of
weight-raising reduces the amount of time during which these
applications cause the problems described above.
Tested-by: NOleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@natalenko.name>
Tested-by: NHolger Hoffstätte <holger@applied-asynchrony.com>
Signed-off-by: NPaolo Valente <paolo.valente@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: NJens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>