10cb0780b7
Cycle 2 of the competitor analysis improvement loop. Research additions: - Kameo: async on tokio, dual bounded/unbounded mailbox (default 64), Erlang-style supervision links, vtable dispatch - Actix: custom Vyukov lock-free MPSC queue (why it's fastest), 256-message assertion guard (validates our budget), Context-as-Future New stress tests (6): - Message ordering preserved under small budget (budget=8) - Multi-threaded: 50 senders × 100 msgs to one receiver (4 threads) - Concurrent spawn+send of 200 actors (4 threads) - 50-level chain spawning across 2 workers - Panic isolation: 10 panicking + 10 healthy actors (4 threads) - Sustained throughput: 10 batches of 100 msgs with interleaved ticks New benchmark groups: - msg_size: throughput and send_latency by message size (8B-4KB) - contention: fanin (1-100 senders), cross_worker (1-4 threads) All 57 tests pass (51 runtime_api + 5 transport + 1 doctest). Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
76 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
76 lines
3.9 KiB
Markdown
# Progress Log
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## Current Stage: Phase 1 — Research + First Improvement Cycle
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### Status: Cycle 2 COMPLETE
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## Plan Overview
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1. **Phase 0**: Codebase audit — understand current swactor architecture, existing tests, benchmarks ✅
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2. **Phase 1**: Broad survey + interleaved improvements
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3. **Phase 2**: Deeper improvements based on findings
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4. **Phase 3**: Testing methodology improvements
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5. **Phase 4**: Final evaluation & documentation
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## Completed This Session
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### Cycle 1: Fairness (Message Budget)
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- **Research**: Studied ractor, tokio, Erlang/OTP BEAM, Linux CFS/EEVDF, libuv
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- **Finding**: `tick_all` drained ENTIRE mailbox per actor per tick — critical fairness bug
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- BEAM uses 4000 reduction budget, tokio uses 128-op cooperative budget
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- Swactor had zero budget — one hot actor could starve all others on same worker
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- **Implementation**: Added `actor_message_budget` to `RuntimeConfig` (default: 64)
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- Modified `tick_all` to break after `budget` messages per actor
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- `budget=0` means unlimited (backward compatible)
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- **Tests**: 3 new fairness tests (hot_actor_does_not_starve_cold_actor, unlimited_budget_drains_all, budget_messages_drain_across_multiple_ticks)
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- **Benchmarks**: Added fairness benchmark group (cold_latency_under_pressure, throughput_by_budget)
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- **Fixes**: Updated RuntimeConfig struct literals across crates (python, runtime-dashboard, mt_benchmarks)
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- **Result**: 45 tests pass (42 original + 3 new), all workspace crates compile
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### Cycle 2: Stress Tests, Benchmarks, Research Expansion
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- **Research**: Added Kameo and Actix analysis to synthesis
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- Actix uses custom Vyukov lock-free MPSC queue (why it's fastest)
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- Kameo has dual bounded/unbounded mailbox, default capacity 64
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- Both use vtable dispatch (not Box<dyn Any> downcast)
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- Actix has 256-message assertion guard (validates our budget approach)
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- **Stress tests**: 6 new tests
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- `message_ordering_preserved_under_budget` — FIFO order with budget=8
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- `mt_stress_many_senders_one_receiver` — 50 senders × 100 msgs, 4 threads
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- `mt_stress_concurrent_spawn_and_send` — 200 concurrent spawn+send, 4 threads
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- `mt_chain_spawning_under_load` — 50-level chain across 2 workers
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- `mt_panic_isolation_under_load` — 10 panicking + 10 healthy actors, 4 threads
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- `sustained_throughput_does_not_drop_messages` — 10 batches × 100 msgs
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- **Benchmarks**: 2 new benchmark groups
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- `msg_size`: throughput and send_latency by message size (8B-4KB)
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- `contention`: fanin (1-100 senders to 1 sink), cross_worker (1-4 threads)
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- **Result**: 51 tests pass (42 original + 3 fairness + 6 stress), all workspace compiles
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### Research Notes
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- Full analysis in `CLAUDE/notes/research_synthesis.md`
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- Baseline benchmarks in `CLAUDE/notes/baseline_benchmarks.md`
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- Constraints in `CLAUDE/notes/constraints.md`
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## Next Steps
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- [ ] **Cycle 2: Stress testing + property-based tests**
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- Concurrent spawn+send stress tests
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- Multi-threaded fairness validation
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- Property: message ordering preserved under budget
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- Property: all messages eventually delivered with budget > 0
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- [ ] **Cycle 3: Adaptive backoff with thread parking**
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- Replace spinning with condvar-based parking (from tokio parker design)
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- Benchmark latency improvement under varying load
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- [ ] **Cycle 4: Enhanced benchmarks**
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- Message size sensitivity (8B, 64B, 256B, 1KB)
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- Latency percentiles (p50, p99, p999)
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- Many-to-one fanin contention
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- Cross-worker vs same-worker delivery comparison
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- [ ] **Cycle 5: Work stealing exploration**
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- Evaluate feasibility of actor migration between workers
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- BEAM two-tier approach: reactive steal + periodic migration
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## Open Questions
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- Should budget be configurable per-actor (not just per-runtime)?
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- Is 64 the right default budget? Benchmarks show budget=32 slightly faster for throughput
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- Thread parking: how to handle the notification mechanism without adding deps?
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## Blockers
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- (none)
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