block: Skip I/O merges when disabled

The block I/O + elevator + I/O scheduler code spend a lot of time trying
to merge I/Os -- rightfully so under "normal" circumstances. However,
if one were to know that the incoming I/O stream was /very/ random in
nature, the cycles are wasted.

This patch adds a per-request_queue tunable that (when set) disables
merge attempts (beyond the simple one-hit cache check), thus freeing up
a non-trivial amount of CPU cycles.

Signed-off-by: Alan D. Brunelle <alan.brunelle@hp.com>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>

block/blk-sysfs.c

@@ -135,6 +135,25 @@ static ssize_t queue_max_hw_sectors_show(struct request_queue *q, char *page)
 	return queue_var_show(max_hw_sectors_kb, (page));
 }
 
+static ssize_t queue_nomerges_show(struct request_queue *q, char *page)
+{
+	return queue_var_show(blk_queue_nomerges(q), page);
+}
+
+static ssize_t queue_nomerges_store(struct request_queue *q, const char *page,
+				    size_t count)
+{
+	unsigned long nm;
+	ssize_t ret = queue_var_store(&nm, page, count);
+
+	if (nm)
+	       set_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_NOMERGES, &q->queue_flags);
+	else
+	       clear_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_NOMERGES, &q->queue_flags);
+
+	return ret;
+}
+
 
 static struct queue_sysfs_entry queue_requests_entry = {
 	.attr = {.name = "nr_requests", .mode = S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR },
@@ -170,13 +189,20 @@ static struct queue_sysfs_entry queue_hw_sector_size_entry = {
 	.show = queue_hw_sector_size_show,
 };
 
+static struct queue_sysfs_entry queue_nomerges_entry = {
+	.attr = {.name = "nomerges", .mode = S_IRUGO | S_IWUSR },
+	.show = queue_nomerges_show,
+	.store = queue_nomerges_store,
+};
+
 static struct attribute *default_attrs[] = {
 	&queue_requests_entry.attr,
 	&queue_ra_entry.attr,
 	&queue_max_hw_sectors_entry.attr,
 	&queue_max_sectors_entry.attr,
 	&queue_iosched_entry.attr,
 	&queue_hw_sector_size_entry.attr,
+	&queue_nomerges_entry.attr,
 	NULL,
 };
 

block/elevator.c

@@ -488,6 +488,9 @@ int elv_merge(struct request_queue *q, struct request **req, struct bio *bio)
 		}
 	}
 
+	if (blk_queue_nomerges(q))
+		return ELEVATOR_NO_MERGE;
+
 	/*
 	 * See if our hash lookup can find a potential backmerge.
 	 */

include/linux/blkdev.h

@@ -408,6 +408,7 @@ struct request_queue
 #define QUEUE_FLAG_PLUGGED	7	/* queue is plugged */
 #define QUEUE_FLAG_ELVSWITCH	8	/* don't use elevator, just do FIFO */
 #define QUEUE_FLAG_BIDI		9	/* queue supports bidi requests */
+#define QUEUE_FLAG_NOMERGES    10	/* disable merge attempts */
 
 static inline void queue_flag_set_unlocked(unsigned int flag,
 					   struct request_queue *q)
@@ -476,6 +477,7 @@ enum {
 #define blk_queue_plugged(q)	test_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_PLUGGED, &(q)->queue_flags)
 #define blk_queue_tagged(q)	test_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_QUEUED, &(q)->queue_flags)
 #define blk_queue_stopped(q)	test_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_STOPPED, &(q)->queue_flags)
+#define blk_queue_nomerges(q)	test_bit(QUEUE_FLAG_NOMERGES, &(q)->queue_flags)
 #define blk_queue_flushing(q)	((q)->ordseq)
 
 #define blk_fs_request(rq)	((rq)->cmd_type == REQ_TYPE_FS)