[erlang-questions] Message-sending performance

David King dking@REDACTED
Tue Sep 11 16:57:11 CEST 2007


> What are the numbers on an SMP VM with >2 schedulers?

For 100,000 messages, it's now instantaneous when accepting them out  
of order. Now there doesn't appear to be a difference between one  
scheduler or two until approximately 100,000,000 messages.

>
> On 9/10/07, David King <dking@REDACTED> wrote: > The problem  
> here is that you are insisting on receiving messages by
> > a given order: {msg, X} with X <- [1..N].  Messages sent become
> > interleaved in the mailbox; when you try to remove, say {msg,
> > 40000} from the 1st process, there are already 10000s of messages
> > in the mailbox from the other process before that one, that must be
> > scanned; receive becomes very slow.
>
> Ah, I can see that, and I can see why, as now it is the messages out
> of order, so expecting to be able to receive them in order is silly
>
> > This is one of the problems one must be keeping an eye on: beware
> > the size of the mailbox. In your problem you will see that if you
> > replace receive by
> >                       receive {msg, _} -> ok end
> > the program will execute extremely fast, as with 1 process.
>
> Yes, it does, now sending with two processes is just as fast as
> sending with one (and when I actually have work to do as I receive
> them, it will be faster). And in my use-case, receiving the messages
> out-of-order isn't a problem at all.
>
> Thank you for the advice.
>
>
> > David King wrote:
> >> I've noticed that I can send 100,000 messages from one process to
> >> another very quickly (less than a second), but if I have two
> >> process  send 50,000 messages each to a given process, it receives
> >> them very  slowly (in my test, 36s). I found this using the
> >> mapreduce  implementation in Joe's book where potentially
> >> thousands of processes  are spawned and many (potentially very
> >> small) messages are sent.
> >> I assume that this is because the message queue is locked while
> >> sending and receiving messages. Is there any way to work around
> >> this  so that having multiple processes sending many messages each
> >> isn't so  slow? In my case I'd like the sender and receiver to be
> >> working  simultaneously, so having each sender process send one
> >> large list  isn't quite as efficient
> >> Here it is with one process:
> >> (nodename@REDACTED)11> message_streamer:stream_messages(100000).
> >> Receiving 10000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 20000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 30000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 40000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 50000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 60000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 70000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 80000 at 63356401790
> >> Receiving 90000 at 63356401790
> >> Done sending 100000 messages
> >> Receiving 100000 at 63356401790
> >> 100000 messages in 1s, 1.00000e+5 msg/s
> >> And here it is with two processes:
> >> (nodename@REDACTED)9> message_streamer:stream_messages(100000).
> >> Receiving 10000 at 63356401639
> >> Receiving 20000 at 63356401643
> >> Receiving 30000 at 63356401650
> >> Receiving 40000 at 63356401660
> >> Receiving 50000 at 63356401673
> >> Done sending 50000 messages
> >> Receiving 60000 at 63356401673
> >> Receiving 70000 at 63356401673
> >> Receiving 80000 at 63356401673
> >> Receiving 90000 at 63356401673
> >> Receiving 100000 at 63356401673
> >> Done sending 50000 messages
> >> 100000 messages in 36s, 2777.78 msg/s
> >> In the multiple-process case, it actually slows down as more
> >> messages  are sent until one of the processes completes, and then
> >> it receives  them all very quickly. Here's the code:
> >> --- code begins ---
> >> -module(message_streamer).
> >> -compile(export_all).
> >> stream_messages(N) ->
> >>    Self=self(),
> >>    Start=myapp_util:now(),
> >>    List=lists:seq(1,N),
> >>    Split_List=split_list(List,erlang:system_info(schedulers)),
> >>    lists:foreach(fun(Sublist) ->
> >>                      spawn_link(fun() ->
> >>                          lists:foreach(fun(Which) ->
> >>                                            Self ! {msg,Which}
> >>                                       end,
> >>                                     Sublist),
> >>                          io:format("Done sending ~p messages~n",
> >> [length(Sublist)])
> >>                        end)
> >>                    end, Split_List),
> >>    lists:foreach(fun(Which) ->
> >>                      case Which rem (N div 10) of
> >>                          0 ->
> >>                            io:format("Receiving ~p at ~p ~n",
> >> [Which,myapp_util:now()]);
> >>                          _ -> ok
> >>                        end,
> >>                      receive {msg,Which} -> ok end
> >>                    end,
> >>                  List),
> >>    Time=case myapp_util:now()-Start of
> >>             0 -> 1;
> >>             X -> X
> >>           end,
> >>    io:format("~p messages in ~ps, ~p msg/s~n",[N,Time,N/Time]).
> >> %% splits a list into equal parts
> >> %% split_list([1,2,3,4,5,6],2) -> [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]
> >> split_list(List,Pieces) ->
> >>    Length=length(List),
> >>    lists:reverse(split_list(List,Length div Pieces,Length,[])).
> >> split_list([], _Per_Piece, 0, Acc) ->
> >>    Acc;
> >> split_list(List, Per_Piece, Length, Acc) when Length>=Per_Piece ->
> >>    {Short,Long} = lists:split(Per_Piece,List),
> >>    split_list(Long, Per_Piece, Length-Per_Piece, [ Short | Acc ]);
> >> split_list(List, Per_Piece, Length, Acc) when Length <Per_Piece ->
> >>    {Short,Long} = lists:split(Length, List),
> >>    split_list(Long, Per_Piece, Length-Length, [ Short | Acc ]).
> >> --- code ends ---
> >> myapp_util:now() just looks like:
> >> now() ->
> >>    calendar:datetime_to_gregorian_seconds(calendar:universal_time 
> ()).
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> erlang-questions mailing list
> >> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> >> http://www.erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> >
> >
> > --
> > Paulo Sérgio Almeida                             Email:
> > psa@REDACTED
> > Dep. Informatica - Universidade do Minho         Phone: +351 253
> > 604451
> > Campus de Gualtar - 4710-057 Braga - PORTUGAL    Fax  : +351 253
> > 604471
>
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