Linux 4.1 Has Improvements For The Multi-Queue Block Layer

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 17 April 2015 at 09:12 AM EDT. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
The latest good stuff for the Linux 4.1 kernel are the block core improvements, which mostly are focused on improving the multi-queue block layer (blk-mq).

For anyone not familiar with the kernel's new multi-queue block layer, you need to be reading more Phoronix. This code was added to Linux 3.13 and can lead to better disk performance with lower latencies by balancing the I/O workload across multiple CPU cores and also supporting multiple hardware queues. Since Linux 3.13, blk-mq has got into great shape and is delivering great performance.


For Linux 4.1, Facebook's Jens Axboe sent in the block core bits that have numerous blk-mq patches. In particular, there's an optimization for speeding up queue runs, blk-mq changes to support dm-mq, and cleaning up of blk-mq code. All the block core bits can be found via this pull request and there's also block driver updates.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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