Patent Application
20100153593
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for ordering accesses to blocks of data on a block storage device. More specifically, the present invention relates to selectively using an elevator sorting algorithm to reduce a central processing unit (CPU) processing load in some instances.
2. Description of the Related Art
Use of the elevator sorting algorithm can cause unwanted loads on a processor when sorting and inserting input/output (I/O) requests in a pending queue of a data processing system.
The present invention provides a computer implemented method and apparatus for queuing I/O requests to a pending queue. The I/O device driver sets a maximum ordered queue length for an I/O device driver coupled to a storage device then receives an I/O request from an application. The I/O device driver determines whether the pending queue is sorted and responds to a determination that the pending queue is sorted, determining if queued I/O requests exceed the maximum ordered queue length. Responding to a determination that the pending queue exceeds the maximum ordered queue length, the I/O device driver adds the I/O request based on a high pointer, and points the high pointer to the I/O request.
The novel features believed characteristic of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
With reference now to the figures and in particular with reference to
In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 112 connects to south bridge and I/O controller hub 104 and audio adapter 116, keyboard and mouse adapter 120, modem 122, read only memory (ROM) 124, storage device 126, CD-ROM drive 130, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communications ports 132, and PCI/PCIe devices 134 connect to south bridge and I/O controller hub 104 through bus 138 and bus 140. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters, add-in cards, and PC cards for notebook computers. PCI uses a card bus controller, while PCIe does not. ROM 124 may be, for example, a flash binary input/output system (BIOS). Storage device 126 and CD-ROM drive 130 may use, for example, an integrated drive electronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) interface. A super I/O (SIO) device 136 may be connected to south bridge and I/O controller hub 104.
An operating system runs on processor 106 and coordinates and provides control of various components within data processing system 100 in
Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programming system, and applications or programs are located on storage devices, such as storage device 126, and may be loaded into main memory 108 for execution by processor 106. The processes of the present invention can be performed by processor 106 using computer implemented instructions, which may be located in a memory such as, for example, main memory 108, read only memory 124, or in one or more peripheral devices.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware in
In some illustrative examples, data processing system 100 may be a personal digital assistant (PDA), which is configured with flash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating system files and/or user-generated data. A bus system may be comprised of one or more buses, such as a system bus, an I/O bus and a PCI bus. Of course, the bus system may be implemented using any type of communications fabric or architecture that provides for a transfer of data between different components or devices attached to the fabric or architecture. A communication unit may include one or more devices used to transmit and receive data, such as a modem or a network adapter. A memory may be, for example, main memory 108 or a cache such as found in north bridge and memory controller hub 102. A processing unit may include one or more processors or CPUs. The depicted example in
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an”, and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.
The corresponding structures, materials, acts, and equivalents of all means or step plus function elements in the claims below are intended to include any structure, material, or act for performing the function in combination with other claimed elements as specifically claimed. The description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated.
As will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, the present invention may be embodied as a system, method, or computer program product. Accordingly, the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module”, or “system.” Furthermore, the present invention may take the form of a computer program product embodied in any tangible medium of expression having computer usable program code embodied in the medium.
Any combination of one or more computer usable or computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, device, or propagation medium. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer-readable medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CDROM), an optical storage device, a transmission media such as those supporting the Internet or an intranet, or a magnetic storage device. Note that the computer-usable or computer-readable medium could even be paper or another suitable medium upon which the program is printed, as the program can be electronically captured, via, for instance, optical scanning of the paper or other medium, then compiled, interpreted, or otherwise processed in a suitable manner, if necessary, and then stored in a computer memory. In the context of this document, a computer-usable or computer-readable medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. The computer-usable medium may include a propagated data signal with the computer-usable program code embodied therewith, either in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. The computer usable program code may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc.
Computer program code for carrying out operations of the present invention may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. The program code may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).
The present invention is described below with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable medium that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable medium produce an article of manufacture including instruction means which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.
The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide processes for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. In addition, the functions and/or acts may transform articles, such as, for example, memory into a different state or thing by virtue of adding or removing electrons to portions of such circuits that form capacitors. Accordingly, such circuits may have physical states that correspond to zero or one or any other representation of data. Moreover, such circuit states may be used to cause particular machines to produce human-perceivable outputs, such as, for example, altering the transmission properties of a liquid crystal display (LCD) or controlling the operation of a sound transducer. It is appreciated that state is not limited solely to the placement of electrons, but that state can be changed based on altering the spin on one or more electrons.
The aspects of the illustrative embodiments provide a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for determining a pending queue reaching a predetermined length and adjusting to an unsorted addition of I/O requests in response thereto.
I/O device driver 213 may be coupled to storage device 203. An I/O device driver accesses a block storage device, directly or indirectly, such that I/O requests made by application and/or an operating system may be serviced by accessing data stored in the block storage device. Device driver 213 may rely on pending queue of I/O requests 251. Storage device 203 has an internal memory configured to queue I/O requests in a queue. The queue has a queue depth, which may vary between 2 and 200, depending on the manufacturer. A queue depth is a maximum number of I/O requests that a storage device can queue simultaneously. A storage device is a block device that accesses data stored therein at least ten times slower than a slowest memory in a data processing system.
Storage device 203 may be, for example, storage device 126 of
A pending queue is a data structure that may be configured such that a processor may process each I/O request in sequence. The pending queue may contain one or more I/O requests, explained below. Accordingly, pending queue 251 may be formed, for example, as a linked list, an array, or any other data structure suitable for use as a queue.
The term ‘low’ with reference to a pointer are terms that are arbitrary and may, in some illustrative embodiments, pertain to either end of a pending queue. A low pointer may be used to select I/O requests for access when a pending queue is in an unsorted state.
I/O requests can be in two forms. A first form of I/O request is the I/O request as delivered to the device driver from the application. The second form of I/O request or queued I/O request is an I/O request as stored in the pending queue. The I/O request in the pending queue may include or otherwise be associated with a pointer that links to a second I/O request that is sequentially after the I/O request. Accordingly, the I/O request, when in the pending queue, may be a linked list element. A linked list element is a data structure that includes metadata to link or point to a second linked list element as well as a data field. The data field contains data that may be used by a software component that accesses the linked list. Linked list elements may be allocated when required. Similarly, a list element may be inserted between two existing list elements. A final element to a list may have a metadata that is a null pointer. A null pointer has a reserved value. The null pointer may be zero, indicating that the pointer refers to no object. Null is the reserved value. Accordingly, the pointer can be a value that references a memory location or to null. A referenced location is a memory address.
A low pointer may point to a head to a pending queue. The head may be a linked list element that points to a subsequent linked list element. A high pointer may point to a final element in a linked list or tail. Accordingly, such a linked list element may include a null pointer. A high pointer may point to a second to final element in a linked list or tail. An I/O device driver may periodically advance the high pointer from the second to final element to a final element in a linked list or tail.
Associated with pending queue 320 is sorted flag 335. A sorted flag is an indicator that indicates that an associated pending queue is made up of I/O requests that are ordered according to block addresses. For example, the pending queue can be filled with I/O requests that increase in block address as the pending queue is traversed beginning with the ‘low’ pointed I/O request. Conversely, an unset sorted flag indicates to a processor to skip ordering any new I/O requests received from an application. A pending queue associated with an unset sorted flag may have one or more I/O requests that have a block address smaller than that of a parent I/O request. In other words, a first linked list element that contains an I/O request may point to a subsequent list element that has a block address smaller than the first linked list element. Nevertheless, a pending queue that is associated with an unset sorted flag is not assured to have any linked list elements that fail to be ordered. In other words, each child element may have a block address that is higher than the block address of a parent element.
Next, the I/O device driver may determine if the pending queue is sorted (step 407). If the I/O device driver determines that the pending queue is not sorted processing continues at step 413. An I/O device driver may make this determination by determining if the sorted flag is set to zero, or otherwise indicates that the pending queue is not sorted.
Next, the I/O device driver may add the I/O request to a list location reached after a high pointer (step 413). Next, the I/O device driver may advance the ‘high’ pointer to reference the added I/O request (step 415). Processing may terminate thereafter.
If the determination at step 407 is positive, the I/O device driver may determine if the maximum ordered queue length is reached for the pending queue (step 409). If the maximum ordered queue length is reached for the pending queue, the I/O device driver may set the sorted flag to zero (step 411). Accordingly, the I/O device driver indicates that the list is unsorted, or at least, the processor may avoid processing normally used to order the newly received I/O request within the pending queue. The sorted flag may be set, for example, as shown in
Next, the I/O device driver may add the I/O request to a list location based on the ‘high’ pointer (step 413). ‘Adding’ may mean that the I/O device driver first creates an empty linked list element pointed to by a final linked list element, such as, for example, I/O request 323 of
Conversely, if the maximum ordered queue length is not reached for the pending queue, the I/O device driver may insert the I/O request to the pending queue according to an elevator sorting algorithm (step 417). The elevator sorting algorithm is explained above, with reference to
A negative determination at either steps 419 or 420 may cause the I/O device driver to complete the steps of initialization 418. By ‘initialization’ it is not meant that the flowchart of
However, if the I/O device driver determines that the pending queue is not empty, or makes a positive determination at step 424, the I/O device driver may determine if the pending queue is sorted (step 425). The I/O device driver may perform this step by determining if the sorted flag is set to one. Such a setting may indicate that the pending queue is sort. Providing the result to step 425 is positive, the I/O device driver may look up a ‘current’ pointer's I/O request (step 429). Otherwise, the I/O device driver may look up a ‘low’ pointer's I/O request (step 431).
Next, the I/O device driver may access the storage device at a block address of the I/O request (step 433). The I/O request is the I/O request referenced by either step 429 or 431. Next, the I/O device driver may advance the pointer (step 435). The pointer is, in the case of the positive branch from step 425, the ‘current’ pointer. On the other hand, the pointer is, in the case of the negative branch from step 431, the ‘low’ pointer. Accordingly, step 435 is the I/O device driver advancing the pointer selected based on the outcome to step 425.
The illustrative embodiments permit a processing load of a processor to be reduced as compared to prior art I/O device driver designs. Accordingly, under conditions where a pending queue becomes excessively long, as compared to the maximum ordered queue length, illustrative embodiments of the invention may permit the processor to be devoted to other tasks than sorting I/O requests during intervals between discovery of overflow beyond the maximum ordered queue length and subsequent draining (or emptying) of the pending queue. Accordingly, as the storage device depth increases along the X-axis 501, the value set for the maximum ordered queue length, as depicted by the Y-axis 503, may increase. For example, a storage device having a queue depth of 200 may form a basis for setting the maximum ordered queue length to 400.
Alternatively, to using a specific function, an illustrative embodiment of the invention may obtain input from a system administrator to set a system tunable, which may be used, directly or indirectly to adjust the maximum ordered queue length. For example, the maximum ordered queue length may be obtained in a manner that, based on previous history of an I/O device driver, is calculated to cause the pending queue to be unsorted a minority of the time.
The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods, and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of code, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). It should also be noted that, in some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions.
The invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, the invention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, etc.
Furthermore, the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system. For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computer readable medium can be any tangible apparatus that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device) or a propagation medium. Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk-read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories, which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers.
Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
The description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention, the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated.
