* aristo: fork support via layers/txframes
This change reorganises how the database is accessed: instead holding a
"current frame" in the database object, a dag of frames is created based
on the "base frame" held in `AristoDbRef` and all database access
happens through this frame, which can be thought of as a consistent
point-in-time snapshot of the database based on a particular fork of the
chain.
In the code, "frame", "transaction" and "layer" is used to denote more
or less the same thing: a dag of stacked changes backed by the on-disk
database.
Although this is not a requirement, in practice each frame holds the
change set of a single block - as such, the frame and its ancestors
leading up to the on-disk state represents the state of the database
after that block has been applied.
"committing" means merging the changes to its parent frame so that the
difference between them is lost and only the cumulative changes remain -
this facility enables frames to be combined arbitrarily wherever they
are in the dag.
In particular, it becomes possible to consolidate a set of changes near
the base of the dag and commit those to disk without having to re-do the
in-memory frames built on top of them - this is useful for "flattening"
a set of changes during a base update and sending those to storage
without having to perform a block replay on top.
Looking at abstractions, a side effect of this change is that the KVT
and Aristo are brought closer together by considering them to be part of
the "same" atomic transaction set - the way the code gets organised,
applying a block and saving it to the kvt happens in the same "logical"
frame - therefore, discarding the frame discards both the aristo and kvt
changes at the same time - likewise, they are persisted to disk together
- this makes reasoning about the database somewhat easier but has the
downside of increased memory usage, something that perhaps will need
addressing in the future.
Because the code reasons more strictly about frames and the state of the
persisted database, it also makes it more visible where ForkedChain
should be used and where it is still missing - in particular, frames
represent a single branch of history while forkedchain manages multiple
parallel forks - user-facing services such as the RPC should use the
latter, ie until it has been finalized, a getBlock request should
consider all forks and not just the blocks in the canonical head branch.
Another advantage of this approach is that `AristoDbRef` conceptually
becomes more simple - removing its tracking of the "current" transaction
stack simplifies reasoning about what can go wrong since this state now
has to be passed around in the form of `AristoTxRef` - as such, many of
the tests and facilities in the code that were dealing with "stack
inconsistency" are now structurally prevented from happening. The test
suite will need significant refactoring after this change.
Once this change has been merged, there are several follow-ups to do:
* there's no mechanism for keeping frames up to date as they get
committed or rolled back - TODO
* naming is confused - many names for the same thing for legacy reason
* forkedchain support is still missing in lots of code
* clean up redundant logic based on previous designs - in particular the
debug and introspection code no longer makes sense
* the way change sets are stored will probably need revisiting - because
it's a stack of changes where each frame must be interrogated to find an
on-disk value, with a base distance of 128 we'll at minimum have to
perform 128 frame lookups for *every* database interaction - regardless,
the "dag-like" nature will stay
* dispose and commit are poorly defined and perhaps redundant - in
theory, one could simply let the GC collect abandoned frames etc, though
it's likely an explicit mechanism will remain useful, so they stay for
now
More about the changes:
* `AristoDbRef` gains a `txRef` field (todo: rename) that "more or less"
corresponds to the old `balancer` field
* `AristoDbRef.stack` is gone - instead, there's a chain of
`AristoTxRef` objects that hold their respective "layer" which has the
actual changes
* No more reasoning about "top" and "stack" - instead, each
`AristoTxRef` can be a "head" that "more or less" corresponds to the old
single-history `top` notion and its stack
* `level` still represents "distance to base" - it's computed from the
parent chain instead of being stored
* one has to be careful not to use frames where forkedchain was intended
- layers are only for a single branch of history!
* fix layer vtop after rollback
* engine fix
* Fix test_txpool
* Fix test_rpc
* Fix copyright year
* fix simulator
* Fix copyright year
* Fix copyright year
* Fix tracer
* Fix infinite recursion bug
* Remove aristo and kvt empty files
* Fic copyright year
* Fix fc chain_kvt
* ForkedChain refactoring
* Fix merge master conflict
* Fix copyright year
* Reparent txFrame
* Fix test
* Fix txFrame reparent again
* Cleanup and fix test
* UpdateBase bugfix and fix test
* Fixe newPayload bug discovered by hive
* Fix engine api fcu
* Clean up call template, chain_kvt, andn txguid
* Fix copyright year
* work around base block loading issue
* Add test
* Fix updateHead bug
* Fix updateBase bug
* Change func commitBase to proc commitBase
* Touch up and fix debug mode crash
---------
Co-authored-by: jangko <jangko128@gmail.com>
The forking facility has been replaced by ForkedChain - frames and
layers are two other mechanisms that mostly do the same thing at the
aristo level, without quite providing the functionality FC needs - this
cleanup will make that integration easier.
Currently, computed hash keys are stored in a separate column family
with respect to the MPT data they're generated from - this has several
disadvantages:
* A lot of space is wasted because the lookup key (`RootedVertexID`) is
repeated in both tables - this is 30% of the `AriKey` content!
* rocksdb must maintain in-memory bloom filters and LRU caches for said
keys, doubling its "minimal efficient cache size"
* An extra disk traversal must be made to check for existence of cached
hash key
* Doubles the amount of files on disk due to each column family being
its own set of files
Here, the two CFs are joined such that both key and data is stored in
`AriVtx`. This means:
* we save ~30% disk space on repeated lookup keys
* we save ~2gb of memory overhead that can be used to cache data instead
of indices
* we can skip storing hash keys for MPT leaf nodes - these are trivial
to compute and waste a lot of space - previously they had to present in
the `AriKey` CF to avoid having to look in two tables on the happy path.
* There is a small increase in write amplification because when a hash
value is updated for a branch node, we must write both key and branch
data - previously we would write only the key
* There's a small shift in CPU usage - instead of performing lookups in
the database, hashes for leaf nodes are (re)-computed on the fly
* We can return to slightly smaller on-disk SST files since there's
fewer of them, which should reduce disk traffic a bit
Internally, there are also other advantages:
* when clearing keys, we no longer have to store a zero hash in memory -
instead, we deduce staleness of the cached key from the presence of an
updated VertexRef - this saves ~1gb of mem overhead during import
* hash key cache becomes dedicated to branch keys since leaf keys are no
longer stored in memory, reducing churn
* key computation is a lot faster thanks to the skipped second disk
traversal - a key computation for mainnet can be completed in 11 hours
instead of ~2 days (!) thanks to better cache usage and less read
amplification - with additional improvements to the on-disk format, we
can probably get rid of the initial full traversal method of seeding the
key cache on first start after import
All in all, this PR reduces the size of a mainnet database from 160gb to
110gb and the peak memory footprint during import by ~1-2gb.
Compared to `keyed_queue`, `minilru` uses significantly less memory, in
particular for the 32-byte hash keys where `kq` stores several copies of
the key redundantly.
* Cosmetics, spelling, etc.
* Aristo: make sure that a save cycle always commits even when empty
why:
If `Kvt` is tied to the `Aristo` DB save cycle, then this save cycle
must also be committed if there is no data to save for `Aristo`.
Otherwise this will lead to excessive core memory use with some fringe
condition where Eth headers (or blocks) are downloaded while syncing
and not really stored on disk.
* CoreDb: Correct persistent save mode
why:
Saving `Kvt` first is seen as a harbinger (or canary) for `Aristo` as
both run in sync. If `Kvt` succeeds saving first, so must be `Aristo`
next. Other than this is a defect.
* Cleaning up, removing cruft and debugging statements
* Make `aristo_delta` fluffy compatible
why:
A sub-module that uses `chronicles` must import all possible
modules used by a parent module that imports the sub-module.
* update TODO
* Extract sub-tree deletion functions into separate sub-modules
* Move/rename `aristo_desc.accLruSize` => `aristo_constants.ACC_LRU_SIZE`
* Lazily delete sub-trees
why:
This gives some control of the memory used to keep the deleted vertices
in the cached layers. For larger sub-trees, keys and vertices might be
on the persistent backend to a large extend. This would pull an amount
of extra information from the backend into the cached layer.
For lazy deleting it is enough to remember sub-trees by a small set of
(at most 16) sub-roots to be processed when storing persistent data.
Marking the tree root deleted immediately allows to let most of the code
base work as before.
* Comments and cosmetics
* No need to import all for `Aristo` here
* Kludge to make `chronicle` usage in sub-modules work with `fluffy`
why:
That `fluffy` would not run with any logging in `core_deb` is a problem
I have known for a while. Up to now, logging was only used for debugging.
With the current `Aristo` PR, there are cases where logging might be
wanted but this works only if `chronicles` runs without the
`json[dynamic]` sinks.
So this should be re-visited.
* More of a kludge
* Aristo: Merge `delta_siblings` module into `deltaPersistent()`
* Aristo: Add `isEmpty()` for canonical checking whether a layer is empty
* Aristo: Merge `LayerDeltaRef` into `LayerObj`
why:
No need to maintain nested object refs anymore. Previously the
`LayerDeltaRef` object had a companion `LayerFinalRef` which held
non-delta layer information.
* Kvt: Merge `LayerDeltaRef` into `LayerRef`
why:
No need to maintain nested object refs (as with `Aristo`)
* Kvt: Re-write balancer logic similar to `Aristo`
why:
Although `Kvt` was a cheap copy of `Aristo` it sort of got out of
sync and the balancer code was wrong.
* Update iterator over forked peers
why:
Yield additional field `isLast` indicating that the last iteration
cycle was approached.
* Optimise balancer calculation.
why:
One can often avoid providing a new object containing the merge of two
layers for the balancer. This avoids copying tables. In some cases this
is replaced by `hasKey()` look ups though. One uses one of the two
to combine and merges the other into the first.
Of course, this needs some checks for making sure that none of the
components to merge is eventually shared with something else.
* Fix copyright year
This PR adds a storage hike cache similar to the account hike cache
already present - this cache is less efficient because account storage
is already partically cached in the account ledger but nonetheless helps
keep hiking down.
Notably, there's an opportunity to optimise this cache and the others so
that they cooperate better insteado of overlapping, which is left for a
future PR.
This PR also fixes an O(N) memory usage for storage slots where the
delete would keep the full storage in a work list which on mainnet can
grow very large - the work list is replaced with a more conventional
recursive `O(log N)` approach.
The Vertex type unifies branches, extensions and leaves into a single
memory area where the larges member is the branch (128 bytes + overhead) -
the payloads we have are all smaller than 128 thus wrapping them in an
extra layer of `ref` is wasteful from a memory usage perspective.
Further, the ref:s must be visited during the M&S phase of garbage
collection - since we keep millions of these, many of them
short-lived, this takes up significant CPU time.
```
Function CPU Time: Total CPU Time: Self Module Function (Full) Source File Start Address
system::markStackAndRegisters 10.0% 4.922s nimbus system::markStackAndRegisters(var<system::GcHeap>).constprop.0 gc.nim 0x701230`
```
The state and account MPT:s currenty share key space in the database
based on that vertex id:s are assigned essentially randomly, which means
that when two adjacent slot values from the same contract are accessed,
they might reside at large distance from each other.
Here, we prefix each vertex id by its root causing them to be sorted
together thus bringing all data belonging to a particular contract
closer together - the same effect also happens for the main state MPT
whose nodes now end up clustered together more tightly.
In the future, the prefix given to the storage keys can also be used to
perform range operations such as reading all the storage at once and/or
deleting an account with a batch operation.
Notably, parts of the API already supported this rooting concept while
parts didn't - this PR makes the API consistent by always working with a
root+vid.
The storage id is frequently accessed when executing contract code and
finding the path via the database requires several hops making the
process slow - here, we add a cache to keep the most recently used
account storage id:s in memory.
A possible future improvement would be to cache all account accesses so
that for example updating the balance doesn't cause several hikes.
* Remove `dirty` set from structural objects
why:
Not used anymore, the tree is dirty by default.
* Rename `aristo_hashify` -> `aristo_compute`
* Remove cruft, update comments, cosmetics, etc.
* Simplify `SavedState` object
why:
The key chaining have become obsolete after extra lazy hashing. There
is some available space for a state hash to be maintained in future.
details:
Accept the legacy `SavedState` object serialisation format for a
while (which will be overwritten by new format.)
* creating a seq from a table that holds lots of changes means copying
all data into the table - this can be several GB of data while syncing
blocks
* nim fails to optimize the moving of the `WidthFirstForest` - the real
solution is to not construct a `wff` to begin with, but this PR provides
relief while that is being worked on
This spike fix allows us to bump the rocksdb cache by another 2 GB and
still have a significantly lower peak memory usage during sync.
* bump rockdb
* Rename `KVT` objects related to filters according to `Aristo` naming
details:
filter* => delta*
roFilter => balancer
* Compulsory error handling if `persistent()` fails
* Add return code to `reCentre()`
why:
Might eventually fail if re-centring is blocked. Some logic will be
added in subsequent patch sets.
* Add column families from earlier session to rocksdb in opening procedure
why:
All previously used CFs must be declared when re-opening an existing
database.
* Update `init()` and add rocksdb `reinit()` methods for changing parameters
why:
Opening a set column families (with different open options) must span
at least the ones that are already on disk.
* Provide write-trigger-event interface into `Aristo` backend
why:
This allows to save data from a guest application (think `KVT`) to
get synced with the write cycle so the guest and `Aristo` save all
atomically.
* Use `KVT` with new column family interface from `Aristo`
* Remove obsolete guest interface
* Implement `KVT` piggyback on `Aristo` backend
* CoreDb: Add separate `KVT`/`Aristo` backend mode for debugging
* Remove `rocks_db` import from `persist()` function
why:
Some systems (i.p `fluffy` and friends) use the `Aristo` memory
backend emulation and do not link against rocksdb when building the
application. So this should fix that problem.
* Remove all journal related stuff
* Refactor function names journal*() => delta*(), filter*() => delta*()
* remove `trg` fileld from `FilterRef`
why:
Same as `kMap[$1]`
* Re-type FilterRef.src as `HashKey`
why:
So it is directly comparable to `kMap[$1]`
* Moved `vGen[]` field from `LayerFinalRef` to `LayerDeltaRef`
why:
Then a separate `FilterRef` type is not needed, anymore
* Rename `roFilter` field in `AristoDbRef` => `balancer`
why:
New name more appropriate.
* Replace `FilterRef` by `LayerDeltaRef` type
why:
This allows to avoid copying into the `balancer` (see next patch set)
most of the time. Typically, only one instance is running on the backend
and the `balancer` is only used as a stage before saving data.
* Refactor way how to store data persistently
why:
Avoid useless copy when staging `top` layer for persistently saving to
backend.
* Fix copyright header?
