smarm/ROADMAP_v0.5.md

# smarm v0.5 — Runtime decomposition & run-path scaling

Goal: dismantle the single `Mutex<SharedState>` along the run path so the
runtime scales to dozens of cores, with crash isolation hardened so a torn
write or a stray cancellation can never poison shared runtime state.

Guiding rules established this cycle:
- **Lock count that matters is hot-path locks.** Cold lifecycle paths
  (spawn/join/monitor/link/finalize) may keep a small per-slot lock; the run
  path (yield/park/unpark/pop/resume) targets zero locks.
- **Lock ordering: io-before-shared, and slot locks are leaves** (never hold
  two slot locks at once). Any new lock states its position in this order.
- **No unwind inside a runtime critical section.** The stop sentinel only
  fires at lock-free observation points.
- **Never hold a thread-local guard across a possible switch point.** An
  actor can be preempted at any allocation and resume on a different OS
  thread; a live `RefCell` borrow (or std `MutexGuard`) then pairs its
  acquire/release across two threads' locals — count underflow / UB.
  `with_runtime`, `with_shared`, and every `RawMutex` guard disable
  preemption for exactly this reason (phase 2 found this the hard way).

---

## Phase 1 — State decomposition: easy peel-offs  ✅ DONE
Split independent concerns out of `SharedState` so the global lock guards less.
- [x] `next_monitor_id` → `AtomicU64` on `RuntimeInner` (lock-free id minting).
- [x] `timers` → own `Mutex<Timers>` (only drain-winner + blocking prims touch it).
- [x] `io` → own `Mutex<Option<IoThread>>` (completion queue already self-locked).
- [x] `pending_closures: Vec` → folded into `Slot::pending_closure` (per-actor data).
- [x] Termination check split: read io liveness *before* `shared`; ordering
      argument documented in `schedule_loop`.
- [x] **Poison fix:** gate `check_cancelled()` in `maybe_preempt` behind
      `PREEMPTION_ENABLED`, so a cancellation sentinel can never unwind while a
      `std::sync::Mutex` (shared/channel) is held. Regression test:
      `tests/poison_stop.rs`.

`SharedState` now holds only: `slots`, `free_list`, `run_queue`, `root_pid`.

## Phase 2 — Slot table split  ✅ DONE
Make slot lookup lock-free and per-slot state independently mutable.
- [x] Fixed slab: `Box<[Slot]>`, slots never move → stable
      addresses, lock-free index. **Assert on exhaustion** with a panic message
      naming `Config::max_actors(n)` as the fix. Default `max_actors = 16_384`.
      (Mental note: must become unbounded or configurable-bounded later — see
      "Deferred" below. Do not let the fixed cap calcify into an assumption.)
- [x] Generation packed INTO the state word (better than the planned separate
      `AtomicU32`): one `AtomicU64 = (gen << 32) | state`, so the gen check is
      atomic with every transition — no ABA, no spurious unparks, by CAS.
- [x] Per-slot CAS state machine `Vacant/Queued/Running/RunningNotified/
      Parked/Done` replacing `state` + `pending_unpark`. Also fixed a latent
      lost wakeup in the Blocking-IO completion path (result set for a
      still-Running actor without a flag).
- [x] `sp` → relaxed `AtomicUsize`; stop flag + first-resume closure as
      `AtomicPtr`s — resume path fully lock-free.
- [x] Per-slot raw non-poisoning futex mutex (`src/raw_mutex.rs`) for the
      cold collections. Guard enters `NoPreempt`.
- [x] Free list → `RawMutex<Vec<u32>>` (a leaf lock). Treiber/striped only if
      the phase-4 spawn-storm bench shows contention — revisit then.
- [x] `finalize_actor` link cascade locks peers one at a time; acyclicity
      argument written at the site. `link()` registers target-first with the
      race argument at the site.
- [x] `live_actors` atomic; termination = io_out == 0 (read pre-queue-lock)
      && queue empty && live == 0; decrement-last ordering documented as the
      correctness crux at the site.

## Phase 3 — Pluggable run queue  ✅ DONE (shootout = phase 4 harness)
- [x] `RunQueue` alias in `src/run_queue.rs`, compile-time selected,
      `compile_error!` guards for zero / >1 features. No runtime dispatch.
      All variants compile in every build (unit tests always run); the
      feature only picks the alias. Non-default variants:
      `--no-default-features --features rq-…`.
      - `rq-mutex`   — `Mutex<VecDeque>`, the control/baseline.
      - `rq-mpmc`    — single hand-rolled Vyukov bounded MPMC ring
                       (per-cell seq numbers). Strict FIFO; "one hot cache line".
      - `rq-striped` — M Vyukov rings, fetch-add ticket distribution. Relaxed
                       FIFO, reordering bounded by ~M. Predicted winner @20c.
- [x] Bounded rings sound via slab cap + at-most-once-enqueued (occupancy ≤
      `max_actors`); mpmc capacity = next_pow2(max_actors), striped
      Σcapacity ≈ 2×max_actors with probe-from-home-stripe. A full ring
      panics as an invariant violation (double enqueue), never spins.
- [x] All hand-rolled, dependency-free.
- [x] Two contracts surfaced by the extraction, documented + debug-asserted
      in `run_queue.rs`: queue ops require preemption disabled (a producer
      suspended mid-publish stalls every consumer behind its cell — livelock);
      and pop-None is a snapshot, not a fence — termination is counter-first
      (`live == 0` alone implies the queue holds nothing actionable; argument
      rewritten at the `schedule_loop` site).

## Phase 4 — Bench harness  ✅ DONE (harness; real numbers from the 20-core box)
- [x] `benches/rq_micro.rs`: raw structures, threads × p:c ratio sweep. One
      binary covers all three structures (types compile in every build).
- [x] `benches/rq_runtime.rs`: yield-storm, ping-pong-pairs, spawn-storm,
      sweeping scheduler count; variant baked in by feature.
- [x] `scripts/bench_rq.sh`: rebuilds per `rq-*` feature, aggregates RQCSV
      lines into `bench_results/summary.csv`. Knobs via SMARM_BENCH_* env;
      e.g. `SMARM_BENCH_THREADS="1 2 4 8 16 20" ./scripts/bench_rq.sh`.
- [x] Harness validated end-to-end at smoke scale on the 1-core sandbox;
      contention curves and the actual variant decision come from the
      20-core box.

## Phase 5 — Safety hardening & model checking
- [ ] `loom` (dev-dependency only, x86 Linux) model tests for the slot state
      machine and each ring variant.
- [ ] `NoPreempt` / no-unwind-under-lock audit across all internal critical
      sections; assert the invariant in debug builds where feasible.

---

## Fast follow (post-v0.5, written down so it isn't lost)
- **Assert the invariants we lean on.** This cycle accumulated load-bearing
  invariants: at-most-once-enqueued, queue-ops-under-NoPreempt, never two
  cold locks, cold-path generation re-verify under the lock, finalize's
  decrement-last, pushes-pair-with-Queued-transitions, thread-local guards
  never crossing a switch point. Whenever code RELIES on one and a cheap
  check exists, assert it at the point of reliance — `debug_assert!` on hot
  paths, full `assert!`/loud panic on cold ones — so a violation fails at
  the breakage site, not three modules downstream (the slab-overflow panic
  and the queue-op preemption debug_assert are the pattern). Sweep the
  existing code for missed spots; new code adopts it as house style. The
  phase-5 audit is the natural vehicle for the sweep.
- **Channel mutex migration.** `channel::Inner<T>` is `Arc<Mutex<_>>` of the
  same poison class as the old shared lock; `recv_match` even runs a user
  predicate under it. The Phase-1 `check_cancelled` gating already removes the
  unwind *source* globally, so channels are poison-safe today — but phase 2
  surfaced a second, sharper reason to migrate: the std `MutexGuard` is held
  with preemption ENABLED, so a timeslice switch inside a channel critical
  section migrates the actor and unlocks the pthread mutex from a different
  OS thread — technically UB (Linux futexes happen to tolerate it). The
  `RawMutex` guard disables preemption and is cross-thread-release sound by
  construction. Migrate as the first post-v0.5 change.

## Deferred / explicitly out of scope for v0.5
- **Unbounded / configurable-bounded actor count.** v0.5 ships a fixed slab
  with a loud assert. Revisit with a segmented slab (array of
  `AtomicPtr<Segment>`, doubling segment sizes, append-only) once we actually
  hit the cap or a workload demands it.
- **Idle-wakeup eventcount.** Idle scheduler threads keep the current 100µs
  poll-sleep. A futex-based eventcount is a later optimization if benches show
  idle latency matters.
- **User-facing safe data structures** (ArcSwap-style cells, structurally-
  shared persistent maps). Context for the runtime work, not in scope here.
- **IO fd hygiene on actor death** (pre-existing v0.2 TODO in `io.rs`).