Re: Block layer / MMC: Order of segments in SG-list

2013-06-11 Thread Joel A Fernandes
Hi Jens,

Thanks for your email.

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 2:15 AM, Jens Axboe ax...@kernel.dk wrote:
 On Sun, Jun 09 2013, Joel A Fernandes wrote:
 Hi,
 So I tried dumping addresses of an SG list in omap_hsmmc driver before
 it is passed to DMA.

 I found some interesting traces occasionally such as the below SG list
 of length 4.

 [6.758716] (0) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1318000, sg phy addr=81318000
 [6.765863] (1) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1317000, sg phy addr=81317000
 [6.773011] (2) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1316000, sg phy addr=81316000
 [6.780087] (3) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1315000, sg phy addr=81315000

 What is interesting is these chunks are really physically contiguous
 but in reverse order in the list. I think a smarter ordering can
 actually improve through put considerably and save precious DMA
 resources by not having to allocate slots for parts of contiguous
 chunk of physical memory.

 Is there any particular reason why this might be the case? I traced to
 find that the SG list is actually prepared by mmc_queue_map_sg -
 blk_rq_map_sg

 mmc or the block layer can't do much about the memory it is handed. The
 sg mappings just reflect the fact that they happened to be in reverse,
 so to speak. You are right in that having those pages in the right order
 and being able to merge the segments is a win. Unless you are heavily SG
 entry starved or your DMA controller has a high per-sg-entry overhead,
 it's usually not a big deal.

We have currently set limits in DMA for maximum of 16 slots, some
times I noticed all 16 allocated to contiguous pages but in reverse.
:)

 That said, you should investigate WHY they are in that order :-)

Sure , I am thinking of tracing this soon to root cause the page allocations.
I am wondering if we can just reorder the SG and write in the reverse
order for such detected cases, but yeah like you said no match to
allocating them in the right order in the first place.

I appreciate your response to my post, thanks!

Regards,
Joel
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-omap in
the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


Re: Block layer / MMC: Order of segments in SG-list

2013-06-10 Thread Jens Axboe
On Sun, Jun 09 2013, Joel A Fernandes wrote:
 Hi,
 So I tried dumping addresses of an SG list in omap_hsmmc driver before
 it is passed to DMA.
 
 I found some interesting traces occasionally such as the below SG list
 of length 4.
 
 [6.758716] (0) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1318000, sg phy addr=81318000
 [6.765863] (1) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1317000, sg phy addr=81317000
 [6.773011] (2) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1316000, sg phy addr=81316000
 [6.780087] (3) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1315000, sg phy addr=81315000
 
 What is interesting is these chunks are really physically contiguous
 but in reverse order in the list. I think a smarter ordering can
 actually improve through put considerably and save precious DMA
 resources by not having to allocate slots for parts of contiguous
 chunk of physical memory.
 
 Is there any particular reason why this might be the case? I traced to
 find that the SG list is actually prepared by mmc_queue_map_sg -
 blk_rq_map_sg

mmc or the block layer can't do much about the memory it is handed. The
sg mappings just reflect the fact that they happened to be in reverse,
so to speak. You are right in that having those pages in the right order
and being able to merge the segments is a win. Unless you are heavily SG
entry starved or your DMA controller has a high per-sg-entry overhead,
it's usually not a big deal.

That said, you should investigate WHY they are in that order :-)

-- 
Jens Axboe

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-omap in
the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html


Block layer / MMC: Order of segments in SG-list

2013-06-09 Thread Joel A Fernandes
Hi,
So I tried dumping addresses of an SG list in omap_hsmmc driver before
it is passed to DMA.

I found some interesting traces occasionally such as the below SG list
of length 4.

[6.758716] (0) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1318000, sg phy addr=81318000
[6.765863] (1) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1317000, sg phy addr=81317000
[6.773011] (2) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1316000, sg phy addr=81316000
[6.780087] (3) length=4096, sg virt addr=c1315000, sg phy addr=81315000

What is interesting is these chunks are really physically contiguous
but in reverse order in the list. I think a smarter ordering can
actually improve through put considerably and save precious DMA
resources by not having to allocate slots for parts of contiguous
chunk of physical memory.

Is there any particular reason why this might be the case? I traced to
find that the SG list is actually prepared by mmc_queue_map_sg -
blk_rq_map_sg

Thanks in advance on any insight on the above.

Regards,
Joel
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-omap in
the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html