[Qemu-devel] [RFC] optimization for qcow2 cache get/put

[Zhang Haoyu]

Hi, all

Regarding too large qcow2 image, e.g., 2TB,
so long disruption happened when performing snapshot,
which was caused by cache update and IO wait.
perf top data shown as below,
   PerfTop:    2554 irqs/sec  kernel: 0.4%  exact:  0.0% [4000Hz cycles],  
(target_pid: 34294)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    33.80%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_cache_do_get            
    27.59%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_cache_put               
    15.19%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_cache_entry_mark_dirty  
     5.49%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] update_refcount               
     3.02%  libpthread-2.13.so  [.] pthread_getspecific           
     2.26%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] get_refcount                  
     1.95%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] coroutine_get_thread_state    
     1.32%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_update_snapshot_refcount
     1.20%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qemu_coroutine_self           
     1.16%  libz.so.1.2.7       [.] 0x0000000000003018            
     0.95%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_update_cluster_refcount 
     0.91%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_cache_get               
     0.76%  libc-2.13.so        [.] 0x0000000000134e49            
     0.73%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] bdrv_debug_event              
     0.16%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] address@hidden       
     0.12%  [kernel]            [k] _raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore   
     0.10%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] vga_draw_line24_32            
     0.09%  [vdso]              [.] 0x000000000000060c            
     0.09%  qemu-system-x86_64  [.] qcow2_check_metadata_overlap  
     0.08%  [kernel]            [k] do_blockdev_direct_IO  

If expand the cache table size, the IO will be decreased, 
but the calculation time will be grown.
so it's worthy to optimize qcow2 cache get and put algorithm.

My proposal:
get:
using ((use offset >> cluster_bits) % c->size) to locate the cache entry,
raw implementation,
index = (use offset >> cluster_bits) % c->size;
if (c->entries[index].offset == offset) {
    goto found;
}

replace:
c->entries[use offset >> cluster_bits) % c->size].offset = offset;
...

put:
using 64-entries cache table to cache
the recently got c->entries, i.e., cache for cache,
then during put process, firstly search the 64-entries cache,
if not found, then the c->entries.

Any idea?

Thanks,
Zhang Haoyu