[RFC PATCH 0/2] grep: make threading smarter

[RFC PATCH 0/2] grep: make threading smarter

[Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón]

833e3df171 (pack-objects: Add runtime detection of online CPU's, 2008-02-22)
added the capability to check the number of online CPUs at runtime to do
better threading, so use that as well with grep.

Testing with a large (more than 4) number of cores and no grep.threads
configuration in real hardware encouraged, to confirm that no other
bottleneck is preventing the additional threads to improve performance.

If platform specific testing shows degradation (specially with HP-UX),
make sure that the right number of CPUs is reported by :

  $ ./t/helper/test-tool online-cpus
  4

There are additional cleanups possible in the grep code but had left it
out of this RFC to avoid confusion and make the change in patch 2 as
straight forward as possible.

There is also a chance that the online_cpus() function will be updated
as it predates POSIX and might be associated with one known performance
issue in HP-UX[1]

Lastly the performance numbers point to deficiencies in kwset and the
compat/regex code that will need to be addressed independently.

Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón (2):
  p7810: add more grep performance relevant cases
  grep: make default number of threads reflect runtime

 Documentation/git-grep.txt |  2 +-
 builtin/grep.c             |  3 +--
 t/perf/p7810-grep.sh       | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++--
 3 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/TU4PR8401MB121664A8A588D799803F1E84E11E0@TU4PR8401MB1216.NAMPRD84.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM/
-- 
2.23.0.rc1

[RFC PATCH 1/2] p7810: add more grep performance relevant cases

[Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón]

Add a baseline for a matching regex and make clear the distinction
between fixed (now using kwset) and a real simple expression.

Signed-off-by: Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón <carenas@gmail.com>
---
 t/perf/p7810-grep.sh | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/t/perf/p7810-grep.sh b/t/perf/p7810-grep.sh
index 9f4ade639f..9a4e335659 100755
--- a/t/perf/p7810-grep.sh
+++ b/t/perf/p7810-grep.sh
@@ -7,13 +7,34 @@ test_description="git-grep performance in various modes"
 test_perf_large_repo
 test_checkout_worktree
 
-test_perf 'grep worktree, cheap regex' '
+test_perf 'grep worktree, fixed regex (no match)' '
 	git grep some_nonexistent_string || :
 '
+test_perf 'grep worktree, fixed regex (common)' '
+	git grep void || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep -I, fixed non binary regex (common)' '
+	git grep -i void || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep -i, fixed caseless regex (common)' '
+	git grep -i void || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep --no-index, fixed regex (common)' '
+	git grep --no-index void || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep worktree, simple regex (common)' '
+	git grep "void|int" || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep -I, simple non binary regex (common)' '
+	git grep -I "void|int" || :
+'
+test_perf 'grep -i, simple caseless regex (common)' '
+	git grep -i "void|int" || :
+'
 test_perf 'grep worktree, expensive regex' '
 	git grep "^.* *some_nonexistent_string$" || :
 '
-test_perf 'grep --cached, cheap regex' '
+test_perf 'grep --cached, fixed regex' '
 	git grep --cached some_nonexistent_string || :
 '
 test_perf 'grep --cached, expensive regex' '
-- 
2.23.0.rc1

[RFC PATCH 2/2] grep: make default number of threads reflect runtime

[Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón]

5b594f457a (Threaded grep, 2010-01-25) added a hardcoded number of
threads(8) to use in grep and 89f09dd34e (grep: add --threads=<num>
option and grep.threads configuration, 2015-12-15) made it configurable
through a knob as a workaround for systems where that default was not
effective.

Use instead the industry standard of 2x number of CPUs (to allow for
IO wait) for the default.

Using Debian 10 amd64 in a 2 CPU VirtualBox running in macOS 10.14.6
and that might had been representative of the original author environment
shows an overall performance improvement by avoiding thread trashing:

Test                                                origin/maint        HEAD
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7810.1: grep worktree, fixed regex (no match)       0.52(0.43+0.49)     0.50(0.44+0.46) -3.8%
7810.2: grep worktree, fixed regex (common)         0.94(1.20+0.50)     0.91(1.24+0.44) -3.2%
7810.3: grep -I, fixed non binary regex (common)    0.98(1.24+0.51)     0.94(1.30+0.44) -4.1%
7810.4: grep -i, fixed caseless regex (common)      0.97(1.31+0.45)     0.93(1.18+0.56) -4.1%
7810.5: grep --no-index, fixed regex (common)       1.02(1.28+0.50)     0.97(1.14+0.59) -4.9%
7810.6: grep worktree, simple regex (common)        0.77(0.96+0.45)     0.73(0.88+0.48) -5.2%
7810.7: grep -I, simple non binary regex (common)   0.78(0.96+0.48)     0.73(0.94+0.43) -6.4%
7810.8: grep -i, simple caseless regex (common)     0.87(1.11+0.48)     0.82(1.16+0.38) -5.7%
7810.9: grep worktree, expensive regex              10.37(19.67+0.76)   10.20(19.46+0.76) -1.6%
7810.10: grep --cached, fixed regex                 4.48(4.37+0.10)     4.63(4.54+0.09) +3.3%
7810.11: grep --cached, expensive regex             23.74(23.61+0.11)   23.39(23.28+0.09) -1.5%

Signed-off-by: Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón <carenas@gmail.com>
---
 Documentation/git-grep.txt | 2 +-
 builtin/grep.c             | 3 +--
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-grep.txt b/Documentation/git-grep.txt
index 2d27969057..5d72e03b2e 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-grep.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-grep.txt
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ grep.extendedRegexp::
 
 grep.threads::
 	Number of grep worker threads to use.  If unset (or set to 0),
-	8 threads are used by default (for now).
+	2 threads per core are used by default.
 
 grep.fullName::
 	If set to true, enable `--full-name` option by default.
diff --git a/builtin/grep.c b/builtin/grep.c
index 580fd38f41..0ed8da30f8 100644
--- a/builtin/grep.c
+++ b/builtin/grep.c
@@ -32,7 +32,6 @@ static char const * const grep_usage[] = {
 
 static int recurse_submodules;
 
-#define GREP_NUM_THREADS_DEFAULT 8
 static int num_threads;
 
 static pthread_t *threads;
@@ -1068,7 +1067,7 @@ int cmd_grep(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 	} else if (num_threads < 0)
 		die(_("invalid number of threads specified (%d)"), num_threads);
 	else if (num_threads == 0)
-		num_threads = HAVE_THREADS ? GREP_NUM_THREADS_DEFAULT : 1;
+		num_threads = HAVE_THREADS ? online_cpus() * 2 : 1;
 
 	if (num_threads > 1) {
 		if (!HAVE_THREADS)
-- 
2.23.0.rc1

Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] grep: make default number of threads reflect runtime

[Junio C Hamano]

Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón  <carenas@gmail.com> writes:

> 5b594f457a (Threaded grep, 2010-01-25) added a hardcoded number of
> threads(8) to use in grep and 89f09dd34e (grep: add --threads=<num>
> option and grep.threads configuration, 2015-12-15) made it configurable
> through a knob as a workaround for systems where that default was not
> effective.
>
> Use instead the industry standard of 2x number of CPUs (to allow for
> IO wait) for the default.

Thanks.  

While I am not bold enough to endorse the "industry standard is
twice the number of CPUs" claim, my gut feeling agrees with you that
8 threads may be too many for a 2 CPU box.

I think we cap the parallelism to the number of CPUs (not twice
that) in all the codepaths that currently call online_cpus(), and
some codepaths even cap it further to avoid creating tasks that are
too small (e.g. name-hash, index-pack).

There may not be a single one-size-fits-all scaling factor (as I/O
bound jobs tend to do better with a bit more workers than there are
cores, but adding more workers would not help when you are CPU
bound), but we'd be better off to have a mechanism to allow us to
later have a consistent way to auto-scale the number of workers?

Random ideas include (not mutually exclusive)

 - accept "[grep] threads = 2xCPU", in addition to "[grep] threads =
   8", to mean "this many workers per CPUs"?

 - add "cpuBound.numThreads" and "ioBound.numThreads" variables to
   configure the number of workers for cpu and io bound jobs, so
   that the users do not have to configure them for each command?

 - build an num_threads() API that is used by the current callers of
   online_cpus(), including the new one this patch adds, perhaps
   with a signature allows it to take configuration key (e.g. "git
   grep" would pass "grep.threads") and if the task is expected to
   be IO or CPU bound ("git grep" may pass "I am heavy on IO"), e.g.

	int num_threads(const char *config_key,
			enum { CPUBOUND, IOBOUND } task_type);

   to hide the complexity of the first two items?

> Using Debian 10 amd64 in a 2 CPU VirtualBox running in macOS 10.14.6
> and that might had been representative of the original author environment
> shows an overall performance improvement by avoiding thread trashing:

The above does not parse very well, at least to me.

> diff --git a/Documentation/git-grep.txt b/Documentation/git-grep.txt
> index 2d27969057..5d72e03b2e 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-grep.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-grep.txt
> @@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ grep.extendedRegexp::
>  
>  grep.threads::
>  	Number of grep worker threads to use.  If unset (or set to 0),
> -	8 threads are used by default (for now).
> +	2 threads per core are used by default.
>  
>  grep.fullName::
>  	If set to true, enable `--full-name` option by default.
> diff --git a/builtin/grep.c b/builtin/grep.c
> index 580fd38f41..0ed8da30f8 100644
> --- a/builtin/grep.c
> +++ b/builtin/grep.c
> @@ -32,7 +32,6 @@ static char const * const grep_usage[] = {
>  
>  static int recurse_submodules;
>  
> -#define GREP_NUM_THREADS_DEFAULT 8
>  static int num_threads;
>  
>  static pthread_t *threads;
> @@ -1068,7 +1067,7 @@ int cmd_grep(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  	} else if (num_threads < 0)
>  		die(_("invalid number of threads specified (%d)"), num_threads);
>  	else if (num_threads == 0)
> -		num_threads = HAVE_THREADS ? GREP_NUM_THREADS_DEFAULT : 1;
> +		num_threads = HAVE_THREADS ? online_cpus() * 2 : 1;
>  
>  	if (num_threads > 1) {
>  		if (!HAVE_THREADS)