Instrument the four suspect regions from bench/RPS: cache-lookup, cache-insert, sqlite-query, and gzip-decode, plus an asset-served progress point. New `ccc causal` subcommand runs the sweep against live traffic and prints a summary (optionally a .coz file and a ledger audit). Ran it under the same 80/20 hot-set workload as bench/RPS - see bench/CAUSAL.md for the methodology and results. Findings: - sqlite-query is the real bottleneck on a cache miss (+20.5% at a 50% speedup, roughly linear). - cache-lookup/cache-insert are noise-level (0-4%) - the O(n) recency-scan touch() bench/RPS flagged as a possible follow-up is not actually costing anything, so that's off the table. - Switched prepare() -> prepare_cached() on the query as the obvious fix; re-measured and it made no real difference (+20.0% -> +20.5%, within noise). Kept it anyway (strictly not worse), but it shows execution cost (B-tree lookup + BLOB copy) dominates over parse cost in that site. - gzip-decode barely gets exercised since real clients (and oha) negotiate gzip - not worth optimizing further. - Net conclusion: the existing CCC_CACHE_CAPACITY tuning from bench/RPS (+42-47% RPS) is the correct lever, and causal profiling explains why - every cache hit skips the one site that matters. Zero cost when the feature is off: causal_site!/progress! compile to no-ops without smarm-causal.
113 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
113 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
# CCC bench: causal profiling
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`smarm` v0.6.0 ships native causal profiling (RFC 007, the Coz algorithm
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transposed onto actors: to estimate what speeding up code site S would do
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to throughput, slow everything *else* down by a percentage of the time
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spent in S, and watch the progress-point rate respond). This is a much
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better way to answer "what's actually worth optimizing?" than reading
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tea leaves out of the raw RPS numbers in [bench/RPS](RPS) - e.g. that
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doc's "is the cache scan an issue?" caveat can now be answered directly.
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Off by default and zero cost when off (build without `--features causal`
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and every `causal_site!`/`progress!` call compiles to a no-op). `urus`
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itself is also instrumented, so its `responses` progress point shows up
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in every run for free.
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## Instrumented sites (`src/main.rs`)
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- `cache-lookup` / `cache-insert` - the hand-rolled LRU in front of
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SQLite, including the O(n) recency-queue `touch()` the RPS bench doc
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flags as a possible net loss at low hit rates.
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- `sqlite-query` - the `SELECT ... FROM versions` on cache miss.
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- `gzip-decode` - the on-the-fly `GzDecoder` path taken when a client
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doesn't send `Accept-Encoding: gzip`.
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Progress point: `asset-served`, bumped once per successful
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`/assets/:package/:version/:filename` response.
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## Running
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```
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cargo build --release --features causal
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nix-shell -p python3 --run "python3 bench/seed.py cdn.db"
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awk '{print "http://127.0.0.1:8333"$0}' bench/urls.txt > /tmp/full_urls.txt
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CCC_DB_PATH=$(pwd)/cdn.db taskset -c 0,1 ./target/release/CCC causal --port 8333 &
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# give it a couple seconds' head start, then throw the same load at it as
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# the RPS bench - the sweep needs real traffic to have anything to measure.
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nix-shell -p oha --run \
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"taskset -c 2-7 oha -z 15s -c 200 --no-tui --urls-from-file /tmp/full_urls.txt"
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```
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The server prints `== smarm causal profile ==` and exits once the sweep
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(every registered site x 0/25/50% speedup, per `ExperimentPlan::default()`)
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finishes - budget your load generator's `-z` duration accordingly (a few
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seconds of warmup plus ~0.6s/cell). Useful env vars:
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- `CCC_CAUSAL_WARMUP_MS` (default 2000) - delay before the sweep starts,
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so the load generator is fully ramped up first.
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- `CCC_CAUSAL_COZ_OUT=/path/to/profile.coz` - also dump a Coz-format
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profile for Coz's existing plot tooling.
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## Reading it
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Each line is one (site, speedup%) experiment cell's rate for a progress
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point, plus its change relative to that site's own 0% baseline. A column
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that stays flat across speedups means optimizing that site buys nothing
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end-to-end - it's off the critical path (queueing behind SQLite, or fully
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overlapped with something else). A column that moves roughly in
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proportion to the speedup is a genuine bottleneck.
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Per the crate's own fidelity note: reported impacts are lower bounds
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(on-CPU site time only; runnable queue-wait inside a site isn't
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attributed), so rankings between sites are trustworthy even if the exact
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percentages understate the win.
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## Results (24-core box, server pinned to 2 CPUs, `oha -c 200`, 80/20 hot-set)
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```
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site cache-lookup
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speedup 0% asset-served 77149.5/s vs baseline +0.0%
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speedup 25% asset-served 79007.0/s vs baseline +2.4%
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speedup 50% asset-served 80207.0/s vs baseline +4.0%
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site sqlite-query
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speedup 0% asset-served 80418.6/s vs baseline +0.0%
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speedup 25% asset-served 91251.6/s vs baseline +13.5%
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speedup 50% asset-served 96923.5/s vs baseline +20.5%
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site cache-insert
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speedup 0% asset-served 88755.9/s vs baseline +0.0%
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speedup 25% asset-served 88560.3/s vs baseline -0.2%
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speedup 50% asset-served 89800.1/s vs baseline +1.2%
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site gzip-decode
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(near-zero samples: the load generator - and most real clients -
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negotiate gzip, so the raw-passthrough branch is what actually runs)
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```
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**Reading it:**
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- `sqlite-query` is the only site with a real signal: +20.5% at a 50%
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speedup, roughly linear with the injected speedup. It's the genuine
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bottleneck on a cache miss.
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- `cache-lookup`/`cache-insert` sit at 0-4%, indistinguishable from noise
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across repeated runs. The hand-rolled LRU (including its O(n) recency
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scan) is *not* where the time on a miss goes - this quantitatively
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contradicts the speculative fix `bench/RPS` proposes (swapping the O(n)
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scan for an O(1) intrusive linked-hashmap). Skip that; it wasn't going
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to buy anything at these cache sizes.
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- Tried `Connection::prepare()` -> `prepare_cached()` on the `sqlite-query`
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site as the obvious fix (statement re-parsing on every miss). Re-ran
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the same sweep after: **no measurable change** (+20.0% before,
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+20.5% after - within run-to-run noise). Kept the change anyway (it's
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strictly not worse and is idiomatic rusqlite), but it tells us parse
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time isn't the dominant cost inside that site - execution (B-tree
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lookup + copying the gzipped BLOB into a fresh `Vec<u8>`) is. Fixing
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that further means going finer-grained (split `sqlite-query` into
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`sqlite-prepare`/`sqlite-exec` sub-sites) or, more practically:
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- The highest-leverage lever `sqlite-query`'s dominance actually points
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to is **avoiding the query altogether** - i.e. the cache-capacity
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tuning `bench/RPS` already measured directly (+42-47% from sizing
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`CCC_CACHE_CAPACITY` to the real hot set). Causal profiling explains
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*why* that worked: every cache hit skips the one site that matters.
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