[Twisted-Python] Twisted-Python Digest, Vol 67, Issue 23

Dirk Moors dirkmoors at gmail.com
Tue Oct 13 10:32:53 EDT 2009


Hello Reza,
I tried the solution you provided and I have to say, that changed a lot!
You gave me a better understanding of how things work with Twisted, and I
really appreciate your response!

Thanks for your help!
Best regards,
Dirk Moors

2009/10/13 <twisted-python-request at twistedmatrix.com>

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Twisted Python vs. "Blocking" Python: Weird   performance
>      on small operations. (Reza Lotun)
>   2. Re: Twisted-Python Digest, Vol 67, Issue 22 (Dirk Moors)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:04:06 +0100
> From: Reza Lotun <rlotun at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Twisted-Python] Twisted Python vs. "Blocking" Python:
>        Weird   performance on small operations.
> To: Twisted general discussion <twisted-python at twistedmatrix.com>
> Message-ID:
>        <95bb10690910130704o7c0ff2besf00dcf5918990dcf at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi Dirk,
>
> I took a look at your code sample and got the async benchmark to run
> with the following values:
> *** Starting Asynchronous Benchmarks.
>
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1 runs) Completed in 0.000181913375854 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10 runs) Completed in 0.000736951828003
> seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100 runs) Completed in 0.00641012191772
> seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1000 runs) Completed in 0.0741751194 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10000 runs) Completed in 0.675071001053
> seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100000 runs) Completed in 7.29738497734
> seconds.
>
> *** Asynchronous Benchmarks Completed in 8.16032314301 seconds.
>
> Which, though still quite a bit slower than the synchronous version,
> is still much better than the 40 sec. mark that you were experiencing.
> My modified version simply returned defer.succeed from your aync
> block-compute functions.
>
> i.e. Instead of your initial example:
> def int2binAsync(anInteger):
>    def packStruct(i):
>        #Packs an integer, result is 4 bytes
>        return struct.pack("i", i)
>
>    d = defer.Deferred()
>    d.addCallback(packStruct)
>
>    reactor.callLater(0,
>                      d.callback,
>                      anInteger)
>
>    return d
>
> my version does:
>
> def int2binAsync(anInteger):
>    return defer.succeed(struct.pack('i', anInteger))
>
> A few things to note in general however:
> 1) Twisted shines for block I/O operations - i.e. networking. A
> compute intesive process will not necessarily yield any gains in
> performance by using Twisted since the Python GIL exists (a global
> lock).
>
> 2) If you are doing computations that use a C module (unforunately
> struct pre 2.6 I believe doesn't use a C module), there may be a
> chance that the C module releases the GIL, allowing you to do those
> computations in a thread. In this case you'd be better off using
> deferToThread as suggested earlier.
>
> 3) There is some (usually minimal but it exists) overhead to using
> Twisted. Instead of computing a bunch of stuff serially and returning
> your answer as in your sync example, you're wrapping everything up in
> deferreds and starting a reactor - it's definitely going to be a bit
> slower than the pure synchronous version for this case.
>
> Hope that makes sense.
>
> Cheers,
> Reza
>
>
> --
> Reza Lotun
> mobile: +44 (0)7521 310 763
> email:  rlotun at gmail.com
> work:   reza at tweetdeck.com
> twitter: @rlotun
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:18:35 +0200
> From: Dirk Moors <dirkmoors at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Twisted-Python] Twisted-Python Digest, Vol 67, Issue 22
> To: twisted-python at twistedmatrix.com
> Message-ID:
>        <cf75a1410910130718m53645515oc65f0890366a12f2 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hello Valeriy,
>
> I tried the thing you suggested, and I attached the (updated) code.
> Unfortunatly, the new code was even slower, producing the following
> results:
>
> *** Starting Asynchronous Benchmarks. (Using Twisted, with
> "deferred-decorator")
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1 runs) Completed in 56.0279998779 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10 runs) Completed in 56.0130000114 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100 runs) Completed in 56.010999918 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1000 runs) Completed in 56.0410001278 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10000 runs) Completed in 56.3069999218 seconds.
>  -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100000 runs) Completed in 58.8910000324
> seconds.
> *** Asynchronous Benchmarks Completed in 59.4659998417 seconds.
>
> I suspect that this would me more inefficient because with the
> deferToThread
> function in place, every single operation will be executed in its own
> thread, which means:
> (1 x 2) + (10 x 2) + (100 x 2) + (1000 x 2) + (10000 x 2) + (100000 x 2)
> threads....which is...a lot.
>
> Maybe the problem lies in the way I test the code? I understand that using
> the asynchronous testcode this way (generating the deferreds using a
> FOR-loop), a lot of deferreds are generated before the reactor starts
> calling the deferred-callbacks.....would there be another, better way to
> test the code?
> The reason I need to now which one is faster (async vs sync functions) is
> because I need to decide on whetehr or not I should re-evaluate the code I
> just recently finished building.
>
> Any other ideas maybe?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Dirk
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:41:19 -0400
> > From: Valeriy Pogrebitskiy <vpogrebi at verizon.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Twisted-Python] Twisted Python vs. "Blocking" Python:
> >        Weird performance on small operations.
> > To: Twisted general discussion <twisted-python at twistedmatrix.com>
> > Message-ID: <EDB2B354-B25D-4A98-AC9D-B9745CA6C3AB at verizon.net>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > Dirk,
> >
> > Using deferred directly in your bin2intAsync() may be somewhat less
> > efficient than some other way described in Recipe 439358: [Twisted]
> >  From blocking functions to deferred functions
> >
> > recipe (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/439358/)
> >
> > You would get same effect (asynchronous execution) - but potentially
> > more efficiently - by just decorating your synchronous methods as:
> >
> > from twisted.internet.threads import deferToThread
> > deferred = deferToThread.__get__
> > ....
> > @deferred
> > def int2binAsync(anInteger):
> >     #Packs an integer, result is 4 bytes
> >     return struct.pack("i", anInteger)
> >
> > @deferred
> > def bin2intAsync(aBin):
> >     #Unpacks a bytestring into an integer
> >     return struct.unpack("i", aBin)[0]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Valeriy Pogrebitskiy
> > vpogrebi at verizon.net
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Oct 13, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Dirk Moors wrote:
> >
> > > Hello Everyone!
> > >
> > > My name is Dirk Moors, and since 4 years now, I've been involved in
> > > developing a cloud computing platform, using Python as the
> > > programming language. A year ago I discovered Twisted Python, and it
> > > got me very interested, upto the point where I made the decision to
> > > convert our platform (in progress) to a Twisted platform. One year
> > > later I'm still very enthousiastic about the overal performance and
> > > stability, but last week I encountered something I did't expect;
> > >
> > > It appeared that it was less efficient to run small "atomic"
> > > operations in different deferred-callbacks, when compared to running
> > > these "atomic" operations together in "blocking" mode. Am I doing
> > > something wrong here?
> > >
> > > To prove the problem to myself, I created the following example
> > > (Full source- and test code is attached):
> > >
> >
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > import struct
> > >
> > > def int2binAsync(anInteger):
> > >     def packStruct(i):
> > >         #Packs an integer, result is 4 bytes
> > >         return struct.pack("i", i)
> > >
> > >     d = defer.Deferred()
> > >     d.addCallback(packStruct)
> > >
> > >     reactor.callLater(0,
> > >                       d.callback,
> > >                       anInteger)
> > >
> > >     return d
> > >
> > > def bin2intAsync(aBin):
> > >     def unpackStruct(p):
> > >         #Unpacks a bytestring into an integer
> > >         return struct.unpack("i", p)[0]
> > >
> > >     d = defer.Deferred()
> > >     d.addCallback(unpackStruct)
> > >
> > >     reactor.callLater(0,
> > >                       d.callback,
> > >                       aBin)
> > >     return d
> > >
> > > def int2binSync(anInteger):
> > >     #Packs an integer, result is 4 bytes
> > >     return struct.pack("i", anInteger)
> > >
> > > def bin2intSync(aBin):
> > >     #Unpacks a bytestring into an integer
> > >     return struct.unpack("i", aBin)[0]
> > >
> > >
> >
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > While running the testcode I got the following results:
> > >
> > > (1 run = converting an integer to a byte string, converting that
> > > byte string back to an integer, and finally checking whether that
> > > last integer is the same as the input integer.)
> > >
> > > *** Starting Synchronous Benchmarks. (No Twisted => "blocking" code)
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (1 runs) Completed in 0.0 seconds.
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (10 runs) Completed in 0.0 seconds.
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (100 runs) Completed in 0.0 seconds.
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (1000 runs) Completed in 0.00399994850159
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (10000 runs) Completed in 0.0369999408722
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Synchronous Benchmark (100000 runs) Completed in 0.362999916077
> > > seconds.
> > > *** Synchronous Benchmarks Completed in 0.406000137329 seconds.
> > >
> > > *** Starting Asynchronous Benchmarks . (Twisted => "non-blocking"
> > > code)
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1 runs) Completed in 34.5090000629
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10 runs) Completed in 34.5099999905
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100 runs) Completed in 34.5130000114
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (1000 runs) Completed in 34.5859999657
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (10000 runs) Completed in 35.2829999924
> > > seconds.
> > >   -> Asynchronous Benchmark (100000 runs) Completed in 41.492000103
> > > seconds.
> > > *** Asynchronous Benchmarks Completed in 42.1460001469 seconds.
> > >
> > > Am I really seeing factor 100x??
> > >
> > > I really hope that I made a huge reasoning error here but I just
> > > can't find it. If my results are correct then I really need to go
> > > and check my entire cloud platform for the places where I decided to
> > > split functions into atomic operations while thinking that it would
> > > actually improve the performance while on the contrary it did the
> > > opposit.
> > >
> > > I personaly suspect that I lose my cpu-cycles to the reactor
> > > scheduling the deferred-callbacks. Would that assumption make any
> > > sense?
> > > The part where I need these conversion functions is in marshalling/
> > > protocol reading and writing throughout the cloud platform, which
> > > implies that these functions will be called constantly so I need
> > > them to be superfast. I always though I had to split the entire
> > > marshalling process into small atomic (deferred-callback) functions
> > > to be efficient, but these figures tell me otherwise.
> > >
> > > I really hope someone can help me out here.
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance,
> > > Best regards,
> > > Dirk Moors
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > <twistedbenchmark.py>_______________________________________________
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