[erlang-questions] Slow line oriented IO

Lukas Larsson lukas@REDACTED
Fri Feb 15 16:58:49 CET 2013


Oh, and here are the benchmarks for me now:

R15B03:
1> timer:tc(line_read_test,read_std,["test.txt"]).
{21307874,14448}

R16B with patch:
1> timer:tc(line_read_test,read_std,["test.txt"]).
{91885,14448}

It's not every day you find a two line change which increases speed by a
factor of 232!

Lukas


On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 4:42 PM, Lukas Larsson
<lukas@REDACTED>wrote:

> aha, you needed to have very long lines in the file to provoke the
> behaviour. The file I was experimenting on had the same line length all the
> time.
>
> I think I've found the culprit. Aparently the read_ahead option was
> ignored after the first buffer had been consumed. Try the patch below and
> see if it works for you:
>
> From 0884480691e047801cef117b19151a7d34c9e438 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Lukas Larsson <lukas@REDACTED>
> Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2013 16:37:52 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] invoke_read_line now remembers read_ahead settings
>
> ---
>  erts/emulator/drivers/common/efile_drv.c |    2 ++
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/erts/emulator/drivers/common/efile_drv.c
> b/erts/emulator/drivers/common/efile_drv.c
> index 2279fec..d81f116 100644
> --- a/erts/emulator/drivers/common/efile_drv.c
> +++ b/erts/emulator/drivers/common/efile_drv.c
> @@ -1160,6 +1160,8 @@ static void invoke_read_line(void *data)
>             /* Need more place */
>             ErlDrvSizeT need = (d->c.read_line.read_size >=
> DEFAULT_LINEBUF_SIZE) ?
>                 d->c.read_line.read_size + DEFAULT_LINEBUF_SIZE :
> DEFAULT_LINEBUF_SIZE;
> +         if (need < (d->c.read_line.binp)->orig_size)
> +           need = (d->c.read_line.binp)->orig_size;
>             ErlDrvBinary   *newbin = driver_alloc_binary(need);
>             if (newbin == NULL) {
>                 d->result_ok = 0;
> --
> 1.7.10.4
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 1:29 AM, Hynek Vychodil <vychodil.hynek@REDACTED>wrote:
>
>> Using async thread drops time down to 4.6s which is still 20 times
>> slower than mine simple wrapper.
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Lukas Larsson <lukas@REDACTED> wrote:
>> > Hello!
>> >
>> > If you start erlang with an async thread (erl +A 1) you will see
>> radically
>> > different behaviour. For me the time it takes to use read_line drops
>> from
>> > 58s to 2s. When doing file i/o you should always have some async
>> threads to
>> > help you do the work, this is why in R16B we changed the default from 0
>> to
>> > 10 async threads.
>> >
>> > Lukas
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 3:46 PM, Hynek Vychodil <
>> vychodil.hynek@REDACTED>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hello,
>> >> I know it was been already discussed here in list and it is also
>> recurring
>> >> topic for at least five years. But anyway I have been bitten by it
>> again
>> >> and
>> >> also found pretty pathological case. I have 30MB text file and it has a
>> >> few
>> >> near to 1MB lines there. (I can provide file with same line lengths if
>> >> somebody interested.) What I have been observed is that reading this
>> file
>> >> using raw file:read_line/1 takes 51s! For comparison I have tried some
>> >> different approaches and what I got (line_read_test:read_std/1 is using
>> >> file:read_line/1):
>> >>
>> >> 1> timer:tc(line_read_test,read_std,["test.txt"]).
>> >> {51028105,2408}
>> >> 2> timer:tc(line_read_test,read,["test.txt"]).
>> >> {226220,2408}
>> >> 3> timer:tc(line_read_test,read_port,["test.txt"]).
>> >> {139388,2408}
>> >>
>> >> $time perl -nE'$i++}{say $i' test.txt
>> >> 2408
>> >>
>> >> real    0m0.053s
>> >> user    0m0.044s
>> >> sys     0m0.008s
>> >>
>> >> $ time wc -l test.txt
>> >> 2408 test.txt
>> >>
>> >> real    0m0.013s
>> >> user    0m0.004s
>> >> sys     0m0.008s
>> >>
>> >> $ time ./a.out test.txt
>> >> 2408
>> >>
>> >> real    0m0.020s
>> >> user    0m0.012s
>> >> sys     0m0.008s
>> >>
>> >> It means erlang should be at least 225 times faster
>> (line_read_test:read/1
>> >> which has flow control). Erlang can be 350 times faster
>> >> (line_read_test:read_port/1 without flow control). Another high level
>> >> language (perl) is almost thousand times faster. Special C program is
>> >> almost
>> >> four thousands times faster and old good glibc is two and half
>> thousands
>> >> times faster. Come on guys it is not even fun when simple (and wrong)
>> >> erlang
>> >> wrapper around standard module is more than two order of magnitude
>> faster.
>> >> From mine experience when there is something two orders of magnitude
>> >> slower
>> >> it tells me there is something damn wrong. I have looked into
>> efile_drv.c
>> >> and
>> >> ti is unfortunately far beyond mine C skill but if simple buffering and
>> >> binary:match/2 can outperform it 225 times there has to be something
>> >> rotten
>> >> in this code.
>> >>
>> >> I have also experimented with read_ahead option in file:open and
>> changing
>> >> to
>> >> less value makes thing worse.
>> >>
>> >> Just to make grasp how bad it is, in same time I'm able sort 150
>> million
>> >> 64bit values (1.2GB of data) three times (one CPU core same HW). It is
>> not
>> >> in
>> >> flow control, mine simple wrapper does flow control too. It can't make
>> >> current code less intrusive, if it consumes 100% CPU for 51s instead of
>> >> 226ms
>> >> then it will definitely affect whole server. It is not in concurrent
>> >> access,
>> >> mine code allows concurrent access too. Admitting there is something
>> >> broken
>> >> is first step to fixing it. I hope I helped at least in this way.
>> >>
>> >> With best regards
>> >>   Hynek Vychodil
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> erlang-questions mailing list
>> >> erlang-questions@REDACTED
>> >> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>> >>
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> erlang-questions mailing list
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>>
>
>
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