[PATCH v2 0/2] nvmet: support unbound_wq for RDMA and TCP

[Sagi Grimberg]

On 19/07/2024 8:31, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 05:14:49PM +0800, Ping Gan wrote:
>> When running nvmf on SMP platform, current nvme target's RDMA and
>> TCP use bounded workqueue to handle IO, but when there is other high
>> workload on the system(eg: kubernetes), the competition between the
>> bounded kworker and other workload is very radical. To decrease the
>> resource race of OS among them, this patchset will enable unbounded
>> workqueue for nvmet-rdma and nvmet-tcp; besides that, it can also
>> get some performance improvement. And this patchset bases on previous
>> discussion from below session.
> So why aren't we using unbound workqueues by default?  Who makea the
> policy decision and how does anyone know which one to chose?
>

The use-case presented is a case where the cpu resources are shared
between nvmet and other workloads running on the system. The ask is to
prevent nvmet to run io threads from specific cpu cores, and vice-versa, to
minimize interference.

The decision is made by the administrator that decides which resources are
dedicated to nvmet vs. other workloads (which are containers in this case).

Changing to unbound workqueues universally needs to prove that it is better
in the general case, outside of this specific use-case. Meaning that 
latency is
not affected by having unbound kthreads accessing the nvme device, the 
rdma qp
and/or the tcp socket.