This is a pretty nice speed win.
The new strategy consists in stacking new candidates as if it was a hash chain.
Then, only if there is a need to actually consult the chain, they are batch-updated,
before starting the match search itself.
This is supposed to be beneficial when skipping positions,
which happens a lot when using lazy strategy.
The baseline performance for btlazy2 on my laptop is :
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 955985 (3.416), 7.06 MB/s , 618.0 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3067341 (3.260), 4.65 MB/s , 521.2 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58095131 (3.649), 6.20 MB/s , 682.4 MB/s
(only level 15 remains for btlazy2, as this strategy is squeezed between lazy2 and btopt)
After this patch, and keeping all parameters identical,
speed is increased by a pretty good margin (+30-50%),
but compression ratio suffers a bit :
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 958060 (3.408), 9.12 MB/s , 621.1 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3078318 (3.249), 6.37 MB/s , 525.1 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58444111 (3.627), 9.89 MB/s , 680.4 MB/s
That's because I kept `1<<searchLog` as a maximum number of candidates to update.
But for a hash chain, this represents the total number of candidates in the chain,
while for the binary, it represents the maximum depth of searches.
Keep in mind that a lot of candidates won't even be visited in the btree,
since they are filtered out by the binary sort.
As a consequence, in the new implementation,
the effective depth of the binary tree is substantially shorter.
To compensate, it's enough to increase `searchLog` value.
Here is the result after adding just +1 to searchLog (level 15 setting in this patch):
15#calgary.tar : 3265536 -> 956311 (3.415), 8.32 MB/s , 611.4 MB/s
15#enwik7 : 10000000 -> 3067655 (3.260), 5.43 MB/s , 535.5 MB/s
15#silesia.tar : 211984896 -> 58113144 (3.648), 8.35 MB/s , 679.3 MB/s
aka, almost the same compression ratio as before,
but with a noticeable speed increase (+20-30%).
This modification makes btlazy2 more competitive.
A new round of paramgrill will be necessary to determine which levels are impacted and could adopt the new strategy.
the test is broken
previous version was too Windows-specific.
It needs to be either refactored to be cross-platform,
or be removed if it doesn't bring any value
(which is indeed unclear).
Recipe in /tests rebuild everything from source for each target.
zstd is still a "small" project, so it's not prohibitive,
yet, rebuilding same files over and over represents substantial redundant work.
This patch replaces *.c files from /lib by their corresponding *.o files.
They cannot be compiled and stored directly within /lib,
since /tests triggers additional debug capabilities unwelcome in release binary.
So the resulting *.o are stored directly within /tests.
It turns out, it's difficult to find several target using *exactly* the same rules.
Using only the default rules (debug enabled, multi-threading disabled, no legacy)
a surprisingly small amount of targets share their work.
It's because, in many cases there are additional modifications requested :
some targets are 32-bits, some enable multi-threading, some enable legacy support,
some disable asserts, some want different kind of sanitizer, etc.
I created 2 sets of object files : with and without multithreading.
Several targets share their work, saving compilation time when running `make all`.
Also, obviously, when modifying one source file, only this one needs rebuilding.
For targets requiring some different setting, build from source *.c remain the rule.
The new rules have been tested within `-j` parallel compilation, and work fine with it.
used absolute paths which are deprecated in meson, also missing some sources
that got split
also move source files each to their own line so future diffs are clearer.
params1 was swapped with params2.
This used to be a non-issue when testing for strict equality,
but now that some tests look for "sufficient size" `<=`, order matters.
The deep fuzzer tests caught a subtle bug that was probably there for a long time.
The impact of the bug is not a crash, or any other clear error signal,
rather, it reduces performance, by cutting data into smaller blocks.
Eventually, the following test would fail because it produces too many 1-byte blocks,
requiring more space than buffer can provide :
`./zstreamtest_asan --mt -s3514 -t1678312 -i1678314`
The root scenario is as follows :
- Create context, initialize it using explicit parameters or a `cdict` to pin them down, set `pledgedSrcSize=1`
- The compression parameters will not be adapted, but `windowSize` and `blockSize` will be automatically set to `1`.
`windowSize` and `blockSize` are dynamic values, set within `ZSTD_resetCCtx_internal()`.
The automatic adaptation makes it possible to generate smaller contexts for smaller input sizes.
- Complete compression
- New compression with same context, using same parameters, but `pledgedSrcSize=ZSTD_CONTENTSIZE_UNKNOWN`
trigger "continue mode"
- Continue mode doesn't modify blockSize, because it used to depend on `windowLog` only,
but in fact, it also depends on `pledgedSrcSize`.
- The "old" blocksize (1) is still there,
next compression will use this value to cut input into blocks,
resulting in more blocks and worse performance than necessary performance.
Given the scenario, and its possible variants, I'm surprised it did not show up before.
But I suspect it did show up, it's just that it never triggered an error, because "worse performance" is not a trigger.
The above test is a special corner case, where performance is so impacted that it reaches an error case.
The fix works, but I'm not completely pleased.
I think the current code relies too much on implied relations between variables.
This will likely break again in the future when some related part of the code change.
Unfortunately, no time to make larger changes if we want to keep the release target for zstd v1.3.3.
So a longer term fix will have to be considered after the release.
To do : create a reliable test case which triggers this scenario for CI tests.
`zstreamtest --newapi` (and `--opaqueapi`) create and destroy way too many threads
resulting in failure of tsan tests,
and potentially connected to the qemu flaky tests.
This is because, at each test, the nb of threads can be changed (random).
The `--no-big-tests` directive reduce this choice to 1/2 threads,
in order to limit memory usage, especially for qemu and 32-bits builds.
Unfortunately, swapping between 1 and 2 threads is enough to constantly create/destroy new mtctx.
This patch takes advantage of the following property :
via compress_generic, no internal mtctx is needed for nbThreads < 2.
As a consequence, when nbThreads == 2, the currently active mtctx is necessarily good.
This dramatically reduces the nb of thread creations when invoking `zstreamtest --newapi --no-big-tests`
(only when parent cctx itself is created, which is randomized to 1/256 tests).
Expected outcome :
- at a minimum : tsan tests shall now work continuously without exploding the thread counter
- at best : flaky qemu tests on `zstreamtest --newapi --no-big-tests` may stop being flaky, due to less stress from constant thread creation/destruction
Real world impact :
minimal, I don't expect users to constantly change `nbThreads` between each invocation.
If `nbThreads` remains stable, existing implementation re-uses existing mtctx.
Also : `zstreamtest --newapi` but without `--no-big-tests` doesn't benefit as much,
since this test can select a random `nbThreads` value between 1 and 4.
The current patch only reduces opportunity to free/create mtctx (for example : 2->1->2 doesn't need a new mtctx)
but doesn't completely eliminate it, since `nbThreads` can still change between 2/3/4.
A more complete solution could be to only use 2 out of 4 allocated threads, thus keeping the pool at a constant size.
This would require a larger change to `POOL_*` api though.
taking advantage of `btopt` improved speed to tune parameters.
Levels 16-19 are stronger than previous release, making the graph more favorable.
In theory, I should also update small-size tables,
but I got lazy on that one ...
zstd streaming API was adding a null-block at end of frame for small input.
Reason is : on small input, a single block is enough.
ZSTD_CStream would size its input buffer to expect a single block of this size,
automatically triggering a flush on reaching this size.
Unfortunately, that last byte was generally received before the "end" directive (at least in `fileio`).
The later "end" directive would force the creation of a 3-bytes last block to indicate end of frame.
The solution is to not flush automatically, which is btw the expected behavior.
It happens in this case because blocksize is defined with exactly the same size as input.
Just adding one-byte is enough to stop triggering the automatic flush.
I initially looked at another solution, solving the problem directly in the compression context.
But it felt awkward.
Now, the underlying compression API `ZSTD_compressContinue()` would take the decision the close a frame
on reaching its expected end (`pledgedSrcSize`).
This feels awkward, a responsability over-reach, beyond the definition of this API.
ZSTD_compressContinue() is clearly documented as a guaranteed flush,
with ZSTD_compressEnd() generating a guaranteed end.
I faced similar issue when trying to port a similar mechanism at the higher streaming layer.
Having ZSTD_CStream end a frame automatically on reaching `pledgedSrcSize` can surprise the caller,
since it did not explicitly requested an end of frame.
The only sensible action remaining after that is to end the frame with no additional input.
This adds additional logic in the ZSTD_CStream state to check this condition.
Plus some potential confusion on the meaning of ZSTD_endStream() with no additional input (ending confirmation ? new 0-size frame ?)
In the end, just enlarging input buffer by 1 byte feels the least intrusive change.
It's also a contract remaining inside the streaming layer, so the logic is contained in this part of the code.
The patch also introduces a new test checking that size of small frame is as expected, without additional 3-bytes null block.
This patch restores capability for each file to receive adapted compression parameters depending on its size.
The bug breaking this feature was relatively silly :
setting a parameter with a value "0" is supposed to be a no-op.
Unfortunately, it would pin down compression parameters as if they were manually set,
preventing later automatic adaptation.
Unfortunately, I'm currently short of a test case that could check this situation and trigger an error.
Compression parameters selection between tableID 0,1,2,3 is largely internal,
leaving no trace to outside world, not even in frame header.
- building cli from /tests preserves potential flags in MOREFLAGS (such as asan/usan)
- MT dictionary tests check for MT capability (MT is not enabled by default for zstd32)
windowLog is now enforced from provided compression parameters,
instead of being copied blindly from `cdict`
where it could be smaller.
also :
- fix a minor bug in zstreamtest --mt : advanced parameters must be set before init
- changed advanced parameter name to ZSTDMT_jobSize
