Throttling writes with asynchronous flushing
US10552322B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Nov 16, 2017 |
| Grant date | Feb 4, 2020 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Aug 18, 2038 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2212/1024
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Embodiments are directed to techniques for allowing a data storage system to be able to flush data to underlying storage when the bandwidth is high without excessively impacting the maximum latency. This may be accomplished by utilizing asynchronous flushing and by throttling incoming writes by preventing too many asynchronous flushes from happening when the amount of available cache space is too small. In addition, an improved system employing Copy on First Write (CoFW) may initiate write throttling only once the amount of available write cache drops below a dynamically-calculated threshold that accounts for an amount of space actually needed to store CoFW buffers. In addition, only a portion of the write caching process is placed under the protection of a mutex or a spinlock, allowing a significant portion of the write caching for any given write operation to be performed without needing the mutex or spinlock, allowing some increased parallelization.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.