[ruby-core:114523] [Ruby master Bug#17263] Fiber context switch degrades with number of fibers, limit on number of fibers

Issue #17263 has been updated by ioquatix (Samuel Williams).

File clipboard-202308251514-grqb1.png added
File clipboard-202308251514-r7g4l.png added

I ran some profiles to try and identify why it was so slow. What I found was `vm_push_frame` becomes slow.

![](clipboard-202308251514-grqb1.png)

vs

![](clipboard-202308251514-r7g4l.png)

It's quite a big difference. I believe this is because of the virtual memory mapping.

I wonder if we could experimentally disable the guard pages to confirm this.

----------------------------------------
Bug #17263: Fiber context switch degrades with number of fibers, limit on number of fibers
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17263#change-104319

* Author: ciconia (Sharon Rosner)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* ruby -v: 2.7.1
* Backport: 2.5: UNKNOWN, 2.6: UNKNOWN, 2.7: UNKNOWN
----------------------------------------
I'm working on developing [Polyphony](https://github.com/digital-fabric/polyphony), a Ruby gem for writing
highly-concurrent Ruby programs with fibers. In the course of my work I have
come up against two problems using Ruby fibers:

1. Fiber context switching performance seem to degrade as the number of fibers
   is increased. This is both with `Fiber#transfer` and
   `Fiber#resume/Fiber.yield`.
2. The number of concurrent fibers that can exist at any time seems to be
   limited. Once a certain number is reached (on my system this seems to be
   31744 fibers), calling `Fiber#transfer` will raise a `FiberError` with the
   message `can't set a guard page: Cannot allocate memory`. This is not due to
   RAM being saturated. With 10000 fibers, my test program hovers at around 150MB
   RSS (on Ruby 2.7.1).

Here's a program for testing the performance of `Fiber#transfer`:

```ruby
# frozen_string_literal: true

require 'fiber'

class Fiber
  attr_accessor :next
end

def run(num_fibers)
  count = 0

  GC.start
  GC.disable

  first = nil
  last = nil
  supervisor = Fiber.current
  num_fibers.times do
    fiber = Fiber.new do
      loop do
        count += 1
        if count == 1_000_000
          supervisor.transfer
        else
          Fiber.current.next.transfer
        end
      end
    end
    first ||= fiber
    last.next = fiber if last
    last = fiber
  end

  last.next = first
  
  t0 = Time.now
  first.transfer
  elapsed = Time.now - t0

  rss = `ps -o rss= -p #{Process.pid}`.to_i

  puts "fibers: #{num_fibers} rss: #{rss} count: #{count} rate: #{count / elapsed}"
rescue Exception => e
  puts "Stopped at #{count} fibers"
  p e
end

run(100)
run(1000)
run(10000)
run(100000)
```

With Ruby 2.6.5 I'm getting:

```
fibers: 100 rss: 23212 count: 1000000 rate: 3357675.1688139187
fibers: 1000 rss: 31292 count: 1000000 rate: 2455537.056439736
fibers: 10000 rss: 127388 count: 1000000 rate: 954251.1674325482
Stopped at 22718 fibers
#<FiberError: can't set a guard page: Cannot allocate memory>
```

With Ruby 2.7.1 I'm getting:

```
fibers: 100 rss: 23324 count: 1000000 rate: 3443916.967616508
fibers: 1000 rss: 34676 count: 1000000 rate: 2333315.3862491543
fibers: 10000 rss: 151364 count: 1000000 rate: 916772.1008060966
Stopped at 31744 fibers
#<FiberError: can't set a guard page: Cannot allocate memory>
```

With ruby-head I get an almost identical result to that of 2.7.1.

As you can see, the performance degradation is similar in all the three versions
of Ruby, going from ~3.4M context switches per second for 100 fibers to less
then 1M context switches per second for 10000 fibers. Running with 100000 fibers
fails to complete.

Here's a program for testing the performance of `Fiber#resume/Fiber.yield`:

```ruby
# frozen_string_literal: true

require 'fiber'

class Fiber
  attr_accessor :next
end

# This program shows how the performance of Fiber.transfer degrades as the fiber
# count increases

def run(num_fibers)
  count = 0

  GC.start
  GC.disable

  fibers = []
  num_fibers.times do
    fibers << Fiber.new { loop { Fiber.yield } }
  end

  t0 = Time.now

  while count < 1000000
    fibers.each do |f|
      count += 1
      f.resume
    end
  end

  elapsed = Time.now - t0

  puts "fibers: #{num_fibers} count: #{count} rate: #{count / elapsed}"
rescue Exception => e
  puts "Stopped at #{count} fibers"
  p e
end

run(100)
run(1000)
run(10000)
run(100000)
```

With Ruby 2.7.1 I'm getting the following output:

```
fibers: 100 count: 1000000 rate: 3048230.049946255
fibers: 1000 count: 1000000 rate: 2362235.6455160403
fibers: 10000 count: 1000000 rate: 950251.7621725246
Stopped at 21745 fibers
#<FiberError: can't set a guard page: Cannot allocate memory>
```

As I understand it, theoretically at least switching between fibers should have
a constant cost in terms of CPU cycles, irrespective of the number of fibers
currently existing in memory. I am completely ignorant the implementation
details of Ruby fibers, so at least for now I don't have any idea where this
problem is coming from.

---Files--------------------------------
clipboard-202308251514-grqb1.png (81.3 KB)
clipboard-202308251514-r7g4l.png (81 KB)


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