block: Improve read ahead size for rotational devices

For a device that does not advertize an optimal I/O size, the function
blk_apply_bdi_limits() defaults to an initial setting of the ra_pages
field of struct backing_dev_info to VM_READAHEAD_PAGES, that is, 128 KB.

This low I/O size value is far from being optimal for hard-disk devices:
when reading files from multiple contexts using buffered I/Os, the seek
overhead between the small read commands generated to read-ahead
multiple files will significantly limit the performance that can be
achieved.

This fact applies to all ATA devices as ATA does not define an optimal
I/O size and the SCSI SAT specification does not define a default value
to expose to the host.

Modify blk_apply_bdi_limits() to use a device max_sectors limit to
calculate the ra_pages field of struct backing_dev_info, when the device
is a rotational one (BLK_FEAT_ROTATIONAL feature is set). For a SCSI
disk, this defaults to 2560 KB, which significantly improve performance
for buffered reads. Using XFS and sequentially reading randomly selected
(large) files stored on a SATA HDD, the maximum throughput achieved with
8 readers reading files with 1MB buffered I/Os increases from 122 MB/s
to 167 MB/s (+36%). The improvement is even larger when reading files
using 128 KB buffered I/Os, with a throughput increasing from 57 MB/s to
165 MB/s (+189%).

Signed-off-by: Damien Le Moal <dlemoal@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: John Garry <john.g.garry@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Reviewed-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250616062856.1629897-1-dlemoal@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions