Re: [Qemu-block] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 6/7] block/backup: teach backup_cow_with_bounce_buffer to copy more at once

[Eric Blake]

On 8/10/19 7:12 AM, Vladimir Sementsov-Ogievskiy wrote:
> 09.08.2019 18:59, Eric Blake wrote:
>> On 8/9/19 10:32 AM, Vladimir Sementsov-Ogievskiy wrote:
>>> backup_cow_with_offload can transfer more than on cluster. Let
>>
>> s/on/one/
>>
>>> backup_cow_with_bounce_buffer behave similarly. It reduces number
>>> of IO and there are no needs to copy cluster by cluster.
>>
>> It reduces the number of IO requests, since there is no need to copy
>> cluster by cluster.

>>> -                                                      bool *error_is_read,
>>> -                                                      void **bounce_buffer)
>>> +                                                      bool *error_is_read)
>>
>> Why is this signature changing?
>>

> 
> 2. Actually it is a question about memory allocator: is it fast and optimized
> enough to not care, or is it bad, and we should work-around it like in
> mirror? And in my opinion (proved by a bit of benchmarking) memalign
> is fast enough to don't care. I was answering similar question in more details
> and with some numbers here:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-11/msg00087.html
> 
> So, I'd prefere to not care and keep code simpler. But if you don't agree,
> I can leave shared buffer here, at least until introduction of parallel 
> requests.
> Then, it will be something like qemu_try_blockalign(MIN(bytes, 64M))..

It may still be worth capping at 64M.  I'm not opposed to a change to
per-request allocation rather than trying to reuse a buffer, if it is
going to make parallelization efforts easier; but I am worried about the
maximum memory usage.  I'm more worried that you are trying to cram two
distinct changes into one patch, and didn't even mention the change
about a change from buffer reuse to per-request allocations, in the
commit message.  If you make that sort of change, it should be called
out in the commit message as intentional, or maybe even split to a
separate patch.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature