IRC Log


Wednesday September 15, 2010

[Time] NameMessage
[01:50] kenkeiter Okay, Rubyists with zmq experience -- question!
[02:23] Xin test
[02:25] Xin Does it make sense to add UDP support to 0mq?
[08:06] sustrik Samy: pong
[08:06] Zao Doesn't PGM stuff travel on UDP already?
[08:09] sustrik Zao: PGM travels on IP
[08:09] sustrik epgm is a convenience hack that travels on UDP instead of IP
[08:09] Zao Oh, right.
[08:09] Zao Never used any of them, so I went with faint memories of manpages past.
[09:18] omarkj kleppari: Morning.
[09:29] mrm2m Hey ho!
[09:30] mrm2m Is there a lightweight introduction, how zmq works internally?
[09:33] pieterh mrm2m: there is documentation of the source code and there are whitepapers
[09:33] pieterh but there is nothing lightweight about 0MQ's internals, really
[09:34] mrm2m ok
[09:39] Bruc hey wat sup all
[10:00] kleppari omarkj: hah, hi!
[10:01] omarkj kleppari: Didn't notice you here until now, are you guys using 0mq?
[10:01] kleppari I'm experimenting a bit
[10:02] kleppari I just love the idea of message passing for concurrency
[10:03] kleppari well, outside of erlang at least
[10:05] kleppari how about yourself?
[10:07] omarkj Working with it.
[10:07] omarkj Let's go pm. :)
[12:49] keffo sustrik, I think I might have figured out the concurrency issue
[12:49] sustrik cremes: here i am
[12:50] sustrik keffo: so what's the problem?
[12:51] keffo I was rewriting (using poll rather than sequential) and to clean up logging etc, and I just noticed one place where I send a null message before sending the rest, except "the rest" already included the incomin route-null, so I suspect it was being sent twie
[12:52] keffo twice
[12:52] keffo nullmore, nullmore, uuidmore, data, etc..
[12:52] sustrik ok, i see
[12:53] sustrik so no problem in 0mq to worry about
[12:53] keffo Not at all
[12:53] sustrik :)
[12:53] keffo I never expected that either :)
[12:53] sustrik you are an optimist then :)
[12:54] keffo It's been very stable and well behaved so far, apart from this issue which is my own fault :)
[12:55] keffo I did 100k pi calcs yesterday, with 10 worker procs on different machines.. the loadbalancer had ~500kb/s passing through it, and in total more than half a gig of logs were generated.. That's when I decided the logging was way wonky, didnt really tell much
[13:25] cremes sustrik: i'm available for the next hour or so if you want to chat
[13:45] sustrik cremes: hi
[13:46] sustrik give me some context first: why have you moved from ruby-ffi to rbzmq?
[13:46] cremes there are multiple ruby runtimes; not all of them support the C extension api that rbzmq uses
[13:47] cremes ffi allows me to support *all* of the runtimes
[13:47] cremes oh, and i haven't moved from one to the other; i would just like rbzmq to have the same api as ffi-rzmq
[13:48] sustrik ok, i see
[13:48] sustrik it looks like brian buchanan is not reponding, right?
[13:48] cremes right
[13:48] sustrik ok, i have admin access to the project
[13:49] sustrik i'll add you there as a developer
[13:49] mato sustrik: cremes: a question; i was wondering myself why there were two ruby bindings
[13:49] mato is there any point in keeping both around?
[13:49] sustrik hi
[13:49] mato if FFI is the way to go then why keep rbzmq at all?
[13:50] cremes um... i don't know; it's probably best to get feedback from folks using rbzmq and ask them why they prefer it
[13:50] cremes i'm biased towards the ffi one, obviously ;)
[13:51] mato that might be a good idea; having two bindings is IMO confusing
[13:51] sustrik does it work with any runtime?
[13:51] cremes that's why i was hoping brian buchanan would speak up
[13:51] mato cremes: is there a mailing list for this? I've not seen any discussion on zeromq-dev...
[13:52] mato maybe just ping there, outline the situation (two bindings, ffi works on all runtimes, etc.) and ask the community
[13:52] cremes this has not been brought up on the zerome-dev list
[13:52] cremes i'll do that
[13:53] sustrik can you explain how does the runtime interoperability work?
[13:53] sustrik so far i had an impression that ffi doesn't work with all the ruby runtimes
[13:53] cremes sustrik: as of a few days ago, ffi works with all of the runtimes
[13:53] sustrik aha
[13:53] cremes i worked out the last details with the runtime guys
[13:53] sustrik so it's new
[13:54] cremes the issue with C extensions is that they oftentimes access lots of internal memory structures
[13:54] sustrik that may actually mean that rbzmq is not needed any more
[13:54] mato cremes: what's the status of FFI support for Ruby MRI (i.e. that which most people are using right now)?
[13:54] cremes ffi allows the runtime authors to hide their implementation details and provide a more solid mechanism for accessing C libraries
[13:55] sustrik i see
[13:55] cremes mato: it's quite good
[13:55] mato cremes: right, but does "quite good" mean "production quality"?
[13:55] mato i guess what i'm asking is if rbzmq goes away then what will that mean for the current mainstream of Ruby MRI users
[13:56] mato will they all just happily start using the FFI binding, or not?
[13:56] cremes mato: perhaps; i can only speak for how it works with 0mq; obviously we still have hangs until 2.1.x comes out with EINTR support for blocking calls
[13:56] mato sure, but the EINTR hangs are orthogonal to FFI/non-FFI
[13:56] sustrik well, whatever happens the rbzmq project is not going to be killed
[13:56] sustrik so no worry
[13:56] cremes mato: i'll ask for feedback on the ML
[13:57] sustrik the problem is that it doesn't have a permanent maintainer
[13:57] cremes mato: sure, it's orthogonal, but it's hard to say if there are other bugs when you get a hang
[13:57] cremes is it due to the blocking behavior or something else?
[13:57] mato well then put a note up about that (lack of maintainer) on the rbzmq project page
[13:57] cremes i don't have the time or energy to run stuff under gdb all of the time to figure that out :)
[13:58] cremes let's take this to the ML and see what users have to say
[13:58] mato yup
[13:58] sustrik ok
[13:58] cremes btw, from a search on github most projects are using the ffi-based binding
[13:58] cremes but i certainly don't want to lose or alienate the rbzmq users
[13:59] cremes which takes us full circle; i'd like each one to present the same api to the user (based off of the C and C++ binding apis)
[13:59] mato definitely
[13:59] mato otherwise it just all gets way too confusing
[13:59] cremes if people can switch back and forth with no code changes, that's a great situation for the community
[13:59] mato is it much work to synchronize the APIs?
[14:00] cremes mato: not a lot but unfortunately i don't have the C chops to do it myself
[14:00] cremes so i need someone else to agree to it
[14:00] cremes to do the work
[14:00] mato cremes: well, ask for help on the list and we'll see what happens
[14:00] cremes will do
[14:05] sustrik mato: man bug!
[14:05] sustrik zmq_socket(3):
[14:05] sustrik "When a ZMQ_XREQ socket is connected to a ZMQ_REP socket each message sent must consist of an empty message part, the delimiter, followed by one or more body parts."
[14:05] mato sustrik: !!?!? :-)
[14:06] sustrik the identities should be mentioned
[14:06] sustrik they are definitely mentioned for ZMQ_XREP
[14:06] ptrb yeah, it's not really clear to me what work i have to do at the app level to do XREQ/REP (or REQ/XREP)
[14:07] mato uh, yeah, i kind of punted on explaining the identity stack on the XREQ side at the time
[14:07] mato sustrik: that stuff was written in a hurry, you remember :)
[14:07] sustrik ptrb: there was a nice diagram somewhere...
[14:07] mato sustrik: anyway, it's not a bug, it's just a simplification :)
[14:07] mato sustrik: i'll look into it.
[14:08] cremes ptrb: was this helpful at all? http://www.zeromq.org/tutorials:xreq-and-xrep/
[14:08] cremes if not, tell me what is unclear and i'll fix it (or edit the page yourself)
[14:08] ptrb *clicks*
[14:08] sustrik ah -- that's the one i meant
[14:08] cremes i was certainly confused by that stuff which is why i wrote it down
[14:09] ptrb yeah, it definitely helps
[14:09] ptrb but ruby is definitely not the right language to use in examples like this
[14:09] ptrb it's as opaque as perl without the benefit of perl's saturation
[14:09] cremes ha
[14:10] mato :-)
[14:45] CIA-20 zeromq2: 03Martin Sustrik 07maint * re2802d9 10/ src/options.cpp : values of RATE, RECOVERY_IVL and SWAP options are checked for negative values - http://bit.ly/9lAWvv
[14:46] pieterh sustrik: nice to see the validation of option values
[14:47] sustrik there are 3 bugs filled by cremes :)
[14:47] mato sustrik: incidentally, there's one annoying thing regarding the option values
[14:48] sustrik yes?
[14:48] mato well, it's the whole "option types" issue
[14:48] sustrik ?
[14:48] mato one thing that i realised the other day when i was writing some simple test cases
[14:48] mato is that in order to use options sensibly from C, you have to have uint64_t / int64_t defined
[14:49] mato now, obviously those are not defined by zmq.h
[14:49] mato of course if you want to use the API you have to do "platform specific stuff" to get those types
[14:49] mato not a good situation :-(
[14:50] mato especially on windows where M$ does not ship stdint.h
[14:50] sustrik i know
[14:50] sustrik what can i do without breaking the backward compatibility?
[14:51] mato probably nothing
[14:51] sustrik :|
[14:51] mato hmm, maybe...
[14:52] mato well, in theory you could define zmq_ namespaced equivalents of those types including the platform magic in zmq.h, but that's kind of ugly
[14:52] mato and it'd probably still break C++ due to it's strict notions of types
[14:52] sustrik it has to be solved properly
[14:53] sustrik BSD-style
[14:53] mato hmm
[14:53] sustrik 4-byte unsinged integer in network byte order
[14:53] mato hang on
[14:53] sustrik and such
[14:53] mato what?
[14:53] mato what does network byte order have to do with it? :)
[14:53] sustrik that's what i do when usign BSD sockets
[14:53] mato ?
[14:54] sustrik addr.port = htons (port);
[14:58] mato sustrik: ah, you're right, i didn't realise e.g. sockaddr_in.sin_port was in network byte order
[14:58] mato sustrik: the thing is, the setsockopt stuff is somewhat ad-hoc
[14:58] CIA-20 zeromq2: 03Martin Sustrik 07master * re2802d9 10/ src/options.cpp : values of RATE, RECOVERY_IVL and SWAP options are checked for negative values - http://bit.ly/9lAWvv
[14:58] CIA-20 zeromq2: 03Martin Sustrik 07master * rff10807 10/ src/options.cpp :
[14:58] CIA-20 zeromq2: Merge branch 'maint'
[14:58] CIA-20 zeromq2: * maint:
[14:58] CIA-20 zeromq2: values of RATE, RECOVERY_IVL and SWAP options are checked for negative values - http://bit.ly/9P99Fu
[14:58] mato it does not use network byte order AFAIK
[14:59] mato sustrik: anyway thinking about it, i guess zmq.h will have to define its own types
[15:00] mato the main problem with that is doing it in a portable fashion :-(
[15:07] ptrb #defines, #defines for everybody!!
[15:07] mato sure, feel free to suggest how to portably define a 64-bit unsigned integer type :-)
[15:08] ptrb you just take two ints and mash 'em together, obviously
[15:08] mato :-)
[15:29] sustrik mato: btw, there's some packaging PATCH on the mailing list
[15:29] sustrik will you reply to that?
[15:30] mato sustrik: yes, later, i know it's there
[15:30] mato have to go now
[15:30] sustrik ok, there's on in the bug tracker as well
[15:30] mato sustrik: i'd have just applied it but the license stuff needs to be sorted out
[15:31] mato else all i can reply is "please state your patch is licensed under..."
[15:31] mato have discussed with pieter will update you this evening
[15:31] mato or pieter will
[15:31] mato bbl
[15:31] sustrik should i ask for the license?
[15:31] mato don't bother lets just fix it
[15:31] mato talk to you in the evening
[15:31] sustrik ok
[15:41] Samy sustrik, just had some questions regarding zeromq's lock-less data structures.
[15:42] sustrik yes?
[15:42] Samy sustrik, I'm working on a library to help ease concurrent programming, it includes a plethora of concurrent data structures, synchronization methods and mechanisms for SMR (currently using hazard pointers, considering implementing RCU).
[15:43] Samy sustrik, I was curious if there were some features you would really like to see, and some specific constrainted data structures (M:N consumer/producers) for zeromq.
[15:43] Samy sustrik, I was also curious if SMR was important for ZeroMQ at all.
[15:44] sustrik sorry, what's SMR?
[15:44] Samy sustrik, safe memory reclamation.
[15:45] Samy sustrik, usually it's important for unbunded lock-less data structures (simple stack being a great example).
[15:46] sustrik does it translate to "make the current state of the memory visible to the other CPU codes"?
[15:47] sustrik sorry, i am not an expert on lock-free algos
[15:48] Samy sustrik, well, I guess fundamentally, it's more like "let other CPUs know I am not using this memory".
[15:48] sustrik ah, ok, let me explain what 0mq is doing
[15:48] Samy sustrik, some techniques will require a full barrier (RCU) while others do not (hazard pointers).
[15:48] Samy sustrik, ok.
[15:48] sustrik the communication always happens between exactly two endpoins
[15:49] sustrik ie. at most 2 cpu cores
[15:49] sustrik so each lock-free queue has exactly one writer and exactly one reader
[15:49] Samy Ah, makes it much easier. :-)
[15:49] Samy Sorry, let me pop open the source-code.
[15:49] sustrik src/ypipe.hpp
[15:49] Samy Thanks, loading.
[15:50] sustrik what it does basically is that writer is appending new items to the linked list
[15:50] sustrik the reader is reading items from the linked list
[15:50] Samy I don't see any padding, sustrik.
[15:51] sustrik what padding?
[15:51] Samy Between w and r.
[15:51] Samy sustrik, to prevent false cache line sharing, this improves concurrency.
[15:51] sustrik that would be nice
[15:51] Samy sustrik, it can be drastic. :-)
[15:51] Samy Let me show you a simple example on this machine.
[15:52] sustrik ok, so what has to be done is separate the variables that belong to the reader and those that belong to the writer
[15:53] sustrik and keep them in different cachelines
[15:53] sustrik right?
[15:53] keffo the data too
[15:53] Samy [sbahra@sbahra validate]$ time ./ck_fifo_spsc 8 1 100000
[15:53] Samy real 0m5.294s
[15:53] Samy [sbahra@sbahra validate]$ time ./ck_fifo_spsc 8 1 100000
[15:53] Samy real 0m7.718s
[15:54] Samy sustrik, the latter is without appropriate padding.
[15:54] sustrik nice
[15:54] sustrik the data are allocated in a contiguous block
[15:54] keffo that was pretty substantial, what arch is that?
[15:54] sustrik to avoid excessive memory allocation
[15:54] Samy sustrik, that is a simple benchmark that creates a token ring using a single-producer/single-consumer lock-less queue (passes around 100000 across 8 threads some number of iterations)
[15:55] Samy keffo, that is on a Nehalem box.
[15:55] keffo aho
[15:55] keffo sustrik, You should look into pooling, not only for that
[15:55] Samy sustrik, you want the writer and reader variables to be on a seperate cache line.
[15:55] sustrik right, i understand that
[15:55] Samy sustrik, so for example, void *reader; char pad[56]; void *writer; ...
[15:56] Samy sustrik, ok.
[15:56] sustrik not sure how to do that in portable fashion though
[15:56] keffo compile time :)
[15:56] keffo macro hell
[15:56] ptrb did someone say #define??
[15:56] ptrb :D
[15:56] Samy sustrik, not very portable (my library tries to make that portable by doing the hard work of generating those constants at compile-time).
[15:56] sustrik :)
[15:56] Samy sustrik, but modern IA32 and SPARCv9 boxes I know of all have 64 byte cache lines.
[15:56] sustrik well, if we assumed the cache line size is 64 bytes
[15:56] keffo cpuid fiddling works I guess :)
[15:57] sustrik we would be right in most cases
[15:57] sustrik no?
[15:57] keffo all x86_64 is >64 no?
[15:57] sustrik 128?
[15:57] Samy keffo, no.
[15:57] Samy keffo, 64.
[15:57] Samy keffo, when I mean IA32, I mean x86/x86_64.
[15:57] keffo >=64 then :)
[15:57] Samy I don't know of any > 64.
[15:58] sustrik padding to 64 bytes seems reasonable imo
[15:58] keffo I meant, x86_64 is presumably >=64, while x86 is not
[15:58] sustrik that would be 64 bytes per reader and 64 bytes per writer
[15:59] sustrik the shared varaible should probably be on a separate cahceline
[15:59] keffo Samy, Have you tried measuring on itanium? :)
[15:59] sustrik so it's 192 bytes per queue
[15:59] Samy keffo, Itanium is very interesting, but barely used, so no.
[16:00] Samy keffo, I would like to work on a port of my library there but I have had design issues, just recently did a major design change.
[16:00] keffo Yeah, void of any cachemisses it should be
[16:00] Samy sustrik, sorry, can you continue with your explanation of ypipe?
[16:00] sustrik ah
[16:00] sustrik ok, so part of the list belongs to the writer thread
[16:00] sustrik part of it to the reader thread
[16:01] sustrik the only point where the two interact is when reader has no more data to read
[16:01] sustrik then it does CAS
[16:01] sustrik to get the writer's portion of the list
[16:02] Samy So, basically, you batch the operations?
[16:02] sustrik exactly
[16:02] sustrik that's the key
[16:02] Samy So, writer does enqueue operations to the queue.
[16:02] sustrik ack
[16:02] Samy The reader occassionally does a batch dequeue.
[16:02] sustrik ack
[16:02] Samy Ok.
[16:02] Samy sustrik, why do you use CAS for the batch dequeue? That can be implemented using an xchg, making the batch dequeue a wait-free operation.
[16:02] sustrik it's pretty effective just because of the batching
[16:03] sustrik hm, i haven't seen the code for a long time
[16:03] sustrik let me have a look
[16:04] Samy It looks like you do a single CAS.
[16:04] Samy Line 137, check_read (I assume?)
[16:05] sustrik "If there are no
[16:05] sustrik // items to prefetch, set c to NULL"
[16:05] sustrik Samy: yes
[16:05] sustrik the cas is used to communicate back to the writer
[16:05] Samy You can implement this without any lock-free operations.
[16:06] sustrik you mean without atomic ops?
[16:06] sustrik or bus locking?
[16:07] Samy Without explicit atomic operations.
[16:07] Samy sustrik, the idea is to share a stub node for both tail and head of the queue.
[16:08] sustrik can you explain in more detail?
[16:08] Samy sustrik, writer updates tail, always updating the next pointer, and reader always assume first node is stub entry.
[16:08] Samy sustrik, I can show you source-code.
[16:08] Samy Let me see if I find it, hold on.
[16:09] sustrik ok
[16:09] sustrik how does the communication between two cpu cores happens then?
[16:09] sustrik cache coherency algos?
[16:11] Samy sustrik, yes.
[16:11] Samy sustrik, the point is, the only time we need to really share state is if the queue is empty.
[16:11] sustrik ack
[16:11] Samy sustrik, we need a way to detect if the queue is empty atomically and update both head and tail atomically.
[16:11] Samy sustrik, by sharing a stub node, this is possible.
[16:12] sustrik i think something like that is done in ypipe
[16:12] sustrik there's an emty item in the list
[16:12] sustrik that servers as a placeholder
[16:12] sustrik that's what you mean by stub, right?
[16:12] Samy Yes.
[16:12] Samy sustrik, http://codepad.org/gtPkkz57
[16:13] Samy This isn't fenced correctly, but that should be fine on IA32.
[16:14] sustrik i thought that IA requires you to fence explicitely
[16:14] sustrik ah, you mean x85
[16:14] sustrik 86
[16:14] Samy Yes.
[16:15] Samy The fences may be sufficient, I just haven't verified it on non-IA32 yet. :-)
[16:15] sustrik ok, there's one more issue there
[16:15] sustrik when reader finds out that there are no more items to read
[16:15] sustrik it goes asleep
[16:16] sustrik it's writers responsibity to wake it up
[16:16] sustrik so the writer has to be informed about the fact that reader tried to get more items and failed
[16:16] Samy sustrik, futex(2) works well.
[16:16] sustrik yes, it's similar
[16:17] sustrik but keep in mind that this is a multi-platform app
[16:17] Samy Things sort of suck without futex. :-(
[16:18] Samy (or a similar mechanism, at least in ring-3)
[16:18] sustrik that's how it is :|
[16:18] Samy But you could abstract a generic CV layer that uses futex directly if available.
[16:18] Samy sustrik, where is this wake-up mechanism implemented?
[16:18] sustrik out of the class, it's a dumb socket pair
[16:19] sustrik i had a futex implementation once
[16:19] Samy What happened?
[16:19] sustrik but it was pain in the ass to make it work everywhere
[16:19] Samy I see.
[16:19] sustrik some linux kernels pretend to have futexes
[16:19] sustrik but astucally return ENOTSUP when you try to use them
[16:19] sustrik and alike
[16:19] Samy I see.
[16:20] sustrik anyway, the wake up mechanism is irrelevant for this discussion
[16:20] Samy Mostly, yes.
[16:20] sustrik what's relevant is the writer has to be notified that reader is sleeping
[16:20] sustrik that's what the second cas is for
[16:20] sustrik in flush function
[16:21] Samy I don't understand.
[16:21] Samy Why not simply use plain loads and stores if this is single reader and consumer?
[16:22] sustrik because one bit of information is passed the other way round
[16:22] sustrik from reader to writer
[16:22] sustrik "i am sleeping"
[16:22] sustrik that's when c is set to NULL
[16:22] sustrik maybe it can be done without atomic ops, i am not an expert
[16:23] sustrik however, if it was a normal locking code, this would be a place where races can occur
[16:24] Samy Ok.
[16:24] sustrik so, reader tries to get the latest batch of the items
[16:24] sustrik and if there are none, it sets c to NULL
[16:25] sustrik in flush function, writer adds new batch of items and if it finds out that c was NULL previously
[16:25] sustrik it knows the reader is sleeping
[16:25] sustrik and that it should wake it up
[16:26] sustrik my feeling is that the operations on c have to be atomic
[16:26] sustrik not 100% sure though
[16:30] Samy read_asleep = false; loop { old = xchg(top, NULL); if old == null then reader_asleep = true; sleep(); }
[16:31] Samy Sorry, read_asleep is in loop.
[16:32] sustrik that's the writer side?
[16:33] Samy Reader.
[16:34] Samy There is still a risk of spurious wake-up, but that isn't a big deal.
[16:34] Samy If it is, then you basically implement a barrier.
[16:34] Samy You have a reader and a writer shared variable. Writer signals reader once, only if reader has signaled writer since last wake-up.
[16:35] sustrik yes, that's the goal
[16:36] Samy And the algorithm.
[16:36] Samy Me too.
[16:36] sustrik can you give a pseudo-code for writer side as well?
[16:38] sustrik in the code above reader_asleep is another shared variable, right?
[16:39] pieterh sustrik: I was trying to say something about options but got interrupted by stuff...
[16:40] pieterh API should IMO reject an identity starting with zero byte
[16:40] sustrik now you are likely to get interrupted by brain-damaging lock-free algo discussion :)
[16:40] pieterh :-/
[16:40] sustrik yes, that would be nice
[16:41] Samy reader: loop { r = false; store_fence; w = true; o = xchg(top, NULL); if old == null then { r = true; sleep(); } }
[16:41] Samy writer: add(); c_w = w; load_fence; c_r = r; if c_r == true and c_w == true; then { c_w = false; signal_reader; }
[16:41] sustrik pieter: fancy sumbitting a patch?
[16:41] pieterh sustrik: I'm pulling master as we speak, yes I'll make you a patch
[16:42] sustrik thanks
[16:42] sustrik Samy: sorry, having 3 discussions in parallel
[16:43] Samy Hey, no problem. :-)
[16:43] Samy I'll be back in some minutes.
[16:43] sustrik sure, checking your code right now
[16:46] sustrik what's top?
[16:46] sustrik which variable belong to whom?
[16:46] sustrik both r and w seem to be shared
[16:49] pieterh sustrik: np. options.cpp already checks that... :-)
[16:49] sustrik good
[16:51] Samy sustrik, yes, they are shared.
[16:52] Samy sustrik, that statement is whatever condition you use to check if the queue is empty.
[16:53] sustrik this one: o = xchg(top, NULL); ?
[16:53] Samy That and next.
[16:53] Samy o == null
[16:53] Samy (not old)
[16:54] sustrik do c_r and c_w are local to writer
[16:54] Samy Yes.
[16:54] Samy The reason we have 2 variables is that writer will signal the reader only once.
[16:55] Samy The reader will then wake-up, and if the queue is empty it will indicate that it is asleep and it is fine for the writer to send another signal.
[16:56] Samy sustrik, if you treat it like a stack, it will make more sense.
[16:56] sustrik Samy: stack of what?
[16:56] Samy sustrik, for a FIFO, you can use another technique.
[16:57] Samy sustrik, of objects.
[16:57] sustrik that's the case in 0MQ
[16:57] Samy sustrik, this is in reference of xchg(top, ...) :)
[16:57] Samy sustrik, what's of relevance to you is the notion of the r and w variables, that's all.
[16:58] sustrik r = "i am sleeeping"
[16:58] sustrik what abour w?
[16:58] sustrik about*
[16:58] Samy w = "reader has woken-up since the last signal"
[16:59] sustrik soemging is missing
[16:59] sustrik w is never set to false
[16:59] Samy Oh, sorry.
[16:59] Samy { c_w = false; signal_reader; } should be { w = false; signal_reader; }
[17:00] sustrik lk,now it makes sense
[17:00] sustrik now, what about the fences
[17:01] sustrik does it sync the data in the queue as well?
[17:02] Samy You can figure that out.
[17:02] Samy That is mainly meant for those flags.
[17:02] Samy The idea, reader should always appear to be set to false before writer is set to true (it must indicate it has woken up before it indicates it is fine to send another signal).
[17:03] sustrik got it
[17:04] sustrik that part ensures that everything happens in nice step-lock fashion
[17:04] Samy Right.
[17:04] sustrik now few technical questions...
[17:04] Samy I'm no expert, but ok.
[17:05] sustrik what does lock;xchg() actually means
[17:05] sustrik is there an implied barrier?
[17:05] Samy On IA32, atomic operations have a total order across all processors.
[17:05] Samy There is an implicit pipeline flush.
[17:06] Samy There is an implied barrier.
[17:06] Samy There is also no need for the lock prefix on xchg.
[17:06] Samy xchg is guaranteed to be atomic (which is what also makes it expensive to use, if you don't need it).
[17:06] sustrik in that case there's no global ordering, right?
[17:06] Samy Usually, yes.
[17:07] Samy add is not guaranteed to be atomic, lock add is.
[17:07] Samy xchg is always atomic.
[17:07] sustrik oh my
[17:07] Samy It's expensive compared to simple loads and stores, that's for sure.
[17:07] sustrik so there's an implied barrier on xchg, right?
[17:07] Samy Yes.
[17:07] sustrik then, in your code we have 2 barriers
[17:08] Samy For more information, you can see Volume 3 of the Intel Architecture Manuals, Chapter 8.
[17:08] sustrik isn't it better to use single cas with a barrier then?
[17:08] Samy sustrik, you don't need any of those barriers for IA32. Stores are always seen in order.
[17:09] Samy sustrik, CAS is expensive.
[17:09] Samy sustrik, it's best to avoid the lock prefix completely if possible.
[17:09] sustrik ack
[17:09] Samy sustrik, atomic loads and stores do this.
[17:10] sustrik atomic load & stores == have global ordering ?
[17:10] Samy sustrik, in theory, CAS can provide infinite consensus. If you don't need infinite consensus, you might not need CAS at all.
[17:10] sustrik anyway, i have to get my head around it
[17:11] sustrik are you around somewhere?
[17:11] Samy Processor ordering.
[17:11] sustrik email, or so?
[17:11] Samy sbahra@repnop.org
[17:11] Samy sustrik, I'd love your feedback on this library I'm working on sometime.
[17:11] Samy sustrik, what architectures does ZeroMQ support?
[17:12] sustrik we've tested on x86, itanium, sparc, ppc
[17:12] sustrik arm
[17:12] Samy sustrik, if you see section 8.2.2 in Volume 3 of the IA32 manuals, you'll get a nice break-down of the memory ordering.
[17:12] Samy sustrik, does the ZeroMQ project have regular access to such boxes?
[17:13] sustrik we have an itanium and sparc box
[17:13] sustrik no ppc
[17:13] Samy Itanium, nice. :-)
[17:13] Samy My PPC box died (Mac Mini) recently. Need to fix it.
[17:14] Samy I sold my only decent SPARCv9 box, at work our SPARCv9 machines are tied to our build cluster.
[17:14] Samy sustrik, if I could get accounts on those, I can port my library's atomic interface for them to support those.
[17:14] Samy sustrik, might be useful, at least as a reference implementation of some structures.
[17:15] Samy sustrik, ;]
[17:15] sustrik our sparc box is extremely old and slow :)
[17:15] Samy Itanium is fine too.
[17:16] Samy Well, Itanium is what I really want access to.
[17:16] sustrik but mato mumbled something about bringing some 14-core sparc
[17:16] sustrik ah
[17:16] sustrik i have to ask mato, i think there's some applications running on it
[17:16] keffo sandy bridge ftw!
[17:16] Samy sustrik, ok.
[17:17] Samy I look forward to future discussions. I would like to show you the work I've done so far for feedback.
[17:17] Samy It is C, not C++, however.
[17:17] sustrik Samy, i can have a look but as you see i am not an expert :)
[17:18] Samy Well, that's fine. The idea is, what would it take to make you use this? As a 3rd party looking to integrate this into their product, what issues do you have with the interface?
[17:18] Samy etc
[17:18] sustrik what's the link to the lib?
[17:18] kleppari we're ditching a couple of sun t1000 boxes at work
[17:18] Samy No link. Tarball, sustrik.
[17:18] Samy When we have a discussion, I can share that.
[17:18] kleppari let me see if I can 'rescue' on of them
[17:19] kleppari s/on/one/
[17:19] sustrik Samy: sustrik@250bpm.com
[17:20] Samy Cool.
[17:20] Samy I'm back to work, take care.
[17:20] sustrik you too
[17:20] sustrik bye
[17:20] sustrik kleppari: i don't think it's really needed
[17:21] sustrik unless you need it yourself
[17:21] kleppari not really
[17:21] kleppari kind of lost interest in solaris after oracle bought it
[17:21] kleppari err, after oracle bought sun
[17:22] kleppari I think they'll do a wonderful job killing it
[17:22] sustrik yeah, looks like there will be a lot of sun boxes avialable :)
[17:22] kleppari heh, yeah - red hat will make a fortune
[17:23] kleppari but the t1000 was a good box, I still think 16 concurrent threads of execution per core is impressive
[17:24] kleppari t2000, sorry
[17:29] pieterh kleppari: we used to have a t2000 at iMatix when we were making OpenAMQ
[17:30] pieterh it was a pretty impressive box, made a noise like an aircraft taking off
[17:30] pieterh and was slower (all 32 cores or whatever) than a 2-core Athlon
[17:31] mato pieterh: it still might be more useful than the old e4500 i can get for the project
[17:31] kleppari slower at what?
[17:31] mato pieterh: 0mq is a very different codebase from OpenAMQ
[17:32] pieterh mato: perhaps, yes
[17:32] mato kleppari: if you do get a chance to rescue one i think it'd be more interesting for development of the lockfree algorithms in 0mq than what i've been offered
[17:32] pieterh kleppari: at raw I/O afaics
[17:32] pieterh but the main difference was probably Linux vs. Solaris
[17:32] mato kleppari: which is an old E4500 (fully spec'ed with 14 CPUs)
[17:32] kleppari I found that these boxes perform pretty well with a huge runqueue
[17:32] kleppari mato: let me see what I can do
[17:32] pieterh they were designed for web services, indeed
[17:32] kleppari mato: can't promise anything, though, but I'll try
[17:33] mato kleppari: no hurry; also, where are you located? it's not worth shipping that stuff from outside of the EU, too expensive
[17:33] kleppari iceland
[17:33] mato lol :)
[17:33] kleppari so the shipping might kill the deal :P
[17:33] mato kleppari: precisely, unless you have friends at smyril line :-)
[17:33] mato "chuck it down with them bananas" :-)
[17:34] kleppari heheh
[17:35] kleppari I don't think we'd be shipping bananas out of the country, but fair point :P
[17:36] pieterh hey... ebay is offering free shipping or something...
[17:36] mato kleppari: thanks for the offer in any case
[17:37] pieterh 0beer0clock
[17:37] mato Øbeer
[17:37] pieterh zbeer
[17:37] mato cyl
[17:37] pieterh cyrsn
[17:38] mato øØØØØøøøØØøøØ!
[17:38] pieterh :-) I knew it...
[17:39] pieterh oh... hang on...
[17:43] kleppari alt gr + o ?
[17:43] kleppari works on the .is layout
[17:44] guido_g and on 105 key .de (qwertz)
[17:44] guido_g and I just saw that ch. 3 is back...
[17:44] pieterh yeah, I fixed it
[17:46] pieterh cyal, i'm off for zbeer
[17:47] pieterh guido_g: there's also a new problem solver in Ch1
[17:47] guido_g oh...
[17:50] guido_g nice one
[17:50] guido_g but can you do it in uml?
[17:51] guido_g *ducks for cover*
[17:53] guido_g more serious thing: smaller version that fits on one page so it can be printed easily
[18:04] keffo sustrik, What scenario could trigger a deadlock? (in single threaded proc.)
[19:09] Samy sustrik, ping?
[19:09] Samy sustrik, http://codepad.org/u1DWN3FG is the correct version.
[19:27] ModusPwnens Does zeromq have a lot of start up overhead of initialization?
[19:27] ModusPwnens or initialization*
[19:36] ModusPwnens the only reason I ask is because i keep getting strange results when I benchmark where the throughput is low intially, but then gradually increases