From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:57:42 -0400 From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: PERF: performance tests with the split LRU VM in -mm Message-ID: <20080728105742.50d6514e@cuia.bos.redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <20080724222510.3bbbbedc@bree.surriel.com> References: <20080724222510.3bbbbedc@bree.surriel.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org Return-Path: To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org List-ID: On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:25:10 -0400 Rik van Riel wrote: > TEST 1: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null bs=1M > > kernel speed swap used > > 2.6.26 111MB/s 500kB > -mm 110MB/s 59MB (ouch, system noticably slower) > noforce 111MB/s 128kB > stream 108MB/s 0 (slight regression, not sure why yet) > > This patch shows that the split LRU VM in -mm has a problem > with large streaming IOs: the working set gets pushed out of > memory, which makes doing anything else during the big streaming > IO kind of painful. > > However, either of the two patches posted fixes that problem, > though at a slight performance penalty for the "stream" patch. OK, the throughput number with this test turns out not to mean nearly as much as I thought. Switching off CPU frequency scaling, pinning the CPUs at the highest speed, resulted in a throughput of only 102MB/s. My suspicion is that faster running code on the CPU results in IOs being sent down to the device faster, resulting in smaller IOs and lower throughput. This would be promising for the "stream" patch, which makes choosing between the two patches harder :) Andrew, what is your preference between: http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/15/465 and http://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=121683855132630&w=2 -- All Rights Reversed -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org