Many Block Changes En Route To Linux 4.10
Jens Axboe has been quick to submit the block changes for the Linux 4.10 kernel and there is a wide range of improvements.
Among the highlights for the block code in Linux 4.10 include:
- Better support for O_DIRECT on block devices as well as improved support for polling with O_DIRECT via a new hybrid mode that pairs polling with an initial sleep. The long-standing O_DIRECT flag aims to minimize cache effects of I/O to/from a particular file by copying directly to the device.
- Completion tracking is done in a more scalable manner.
- Support for automatic throttling of writeback queues on the block side.
- Support for zoned block devices in the block code and SCSI ZBC (Zoned Block Commands) support. This is part of the work on Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR).
- The NBD code now has multi-connection support for allowing user-space to provide multiple connections to a single NBD (Network Block Device) device, which paired with block-mq, can lead to much better performance.
- The block layer NVMe code has support for the WRITE_ZEROES command to set a range of blocks to zero.
- LightNVM updates. LightNVM as a refresher is the project around open-channel solid state drive support for allowing the host to manage data placement, garbage collection, and other functionality normally done by the SSD firmware.
- Various other code improvements and fixes.
More details on the block core feature changes for Linux 4.10 via this kernel mailing list message.
Among the highlights for the block code in Linux 4.10 include:
- Better support for O_DIRECT on block devices as well as improved support for polling with O_DIRECT via a new hybrid mode that pairs polling with an initial sleep. The long-standing O_DIRECT flag aims to minimize cache effects of I/O to/from a particular file by copying directly to the device.
- Completion tracking is done in a more scalable manner.
- Support for automatic throttling of writeback queues on the block side.
- Support for zoned block devices in the block code and SCSI ZBC (Zoned Block Commands) support. This is part of the work on Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR).
- The NBD code now has multi-connection support for allowing user-space to provide multiple connections to a single NBD (Network Block Device) device, which paired with block-mq, can lead to much better performance.
- The block layer NVMe code has support for the WRITE_ZEROES command to set a range of blocks to zero.
- LightNVM updates. LightNVM as a refresher is the project around open-channel solid state drive support for allowing the host to manage data placement, garbage collection, and other functionality normally done by the SSD firmware.
- Various other code improvements and fixes.
More details on the block core feature changes for Linux 4.10 via this kernel mailing list message.
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