* misc memory and perf fixes
* use EpochRef for attestation aggregation
* compress effective balances in memory (medalla unfinalized: 4gb ->
1gb)
* avoid hitting db when rewinding to head or clearance state
* avoid hitting db when blocks can be applied to in-memory state -
speeds up startup considerably
* avoid storing epochref in fork choice
* simplify and speed up beacon block creation flow - avoids state reload
thanks to head rewind optimization
* iterator-based committee and attestation participation help avoid lots
of small memory allocations throughout epoch transition (40% speedup on
epoch processing, for example during startup)
* add constant for threshold
This implements disparity, resolving a part of
https://github.com/status-im/nim-beacon-chain/issues/1367
* make BeaconTime a duration for fractional seconds
* factor out attestation/aggregate validation
* simplify recording of queued attestations
* simplify attestation signature check
* fix blocks_received metric
* add some trivial validation tests
* remove unresolved attestation table - attestations for unknown blocks
are dropped instead (cannot verify their signature)
Replace shuffling function with zrnt version - `get_shuffled_seq` in
particular puts more strain on the GC by allocating superfluous seq's
which turns out to have a significant impact on block processing (when
replaying blocks for example) - 4x improvement on non-epoch, 1.5x on
epoch blocks (replay is done without signature checking)
Medalla, first 10k slots - pre:
```
Loaded 68973 blocks, head slot 117077
All time are ms
Average, StdDev, Min, Max, Samples,
Test
Validation is turned off meaning that no BLS operations are performed
76855.848, 0.000, 76855.848, 76855.848, 1,
Initialize DB
1.073, 0.914, 0.071, 12.454, 7831,
Load block from database
31.382, 0.000, 31.382, 31.382, 1,
Load state from database
85.644, 30.350, 3.056, 466.136, 7519,
Apply block
506.569, 91.129, 130.654, 874.786, 312,
Apply epoch block
```
post:
```
Loaded 68973 blocks, head slot 117077
All time are ms
Average, StdDev, Min, Max, Samples,
Test
Validation is turned off meaning that no BLS operations are performed
72457.303, 0.000, 72457.303, 72457.303, 1,
Initialize DB
1.015, 0.858, 0.070, 11.231, 7831,
Load block from database
28.983, 0.000, 28.983, 28.983, 1,
Load state from database
21.725, 17.461, 2.659, 393.217, 7519,
Apply block
324.012, 33.954, 45.452, 440.532, 312,
Apply epoch block
```
When blocks and attestations arrive, they are SSZ-decoded twice: once
for validation and once for processing. This branch enqueues the decoded
block directly for processing, avoiding the second, slow
deserialization.
* move processing of blocks and attestations to queue
* ...and out from beacon_node
* split attestation processing into attestations and aggregates
* also updates metrics
* clean up logging to better follow the lifetime of gossip: arrival,
validation and processing
* drop attestations and aggregates if there are too many
* try to prioritise blocks and aggregates before single-validator
attestations
* don't sort shuffled_validator_indices, just get them directly with
iteration
* grab full epoch of proposer indices while we have the data available -
they'll get cached and reused
* avoid computing active validator set when not used for logging
* remove one cache, add another
This cache removes the need for rewinding in most attestation validation
flow since the attestations come from one of two epochs and must be
targetting a viable block.
Additionally, it also removes all state caches which are less likely to
be used over-all - more metrics are needed to track the rewinding.
On risk is that when chains don't finalize, we'll have lots of epochrefs
in memory meaning lots of validator key databases, most being exactly
the same. This can be addressed in any number of ways. Some of the
memory usage is mitigated by the fact that we previously had lots of big
state caches and now we're keeping only keys instead.
* cleanups
* doc
* limit attestations kept in attestation pool
With fork choice updated, the attestation pool only needs to keep track
of attestations that will eventually end up in blocks - we can thus
limit the horizon of attestations that we keep more aggressively.
To get here, we expose getEpochRef which gets metadata about a
particular epochref, and make sure to populate it when a block is added
- this ensures that state rewinds during block addition are minimized.
In addition, we'll use the target root/epoch when validating
attestations - this helps minimize the number of different states that
we need to rewind to, in general.
* remove CandidateChains.justifiedState
unused
* remove BlockPools.Head object
* avoid quadratic quarantine loop
* fix
* add helper for beacon committee length (used for quickly validating
attestations)
* refactor some attestation checks to do cheap checks early
* validate attestation epoch before computing active validator set
* clean up documentation / comments
* fill state cache on demand
* avoid converting from uint64 to int, and where most feasible, int type conversion at all
* .len.uint64 -> .len64
* fix 32-bit compilation
* try keeping state_sim loop variable/bounds as int for 32-bit Azure
* len64 -> lenu64
* cache beacon committee size calculation
this fixes a bug in get_validator_churn_limit as well
* fix
* make committee counts consistently uint64
mixing feels like the worst of the two worlds
* restore EpochRef and flush statecaches on epoch transitions
* more targeted cache invalidation
* remove get_empty_per_epoch_cache(); implement simpler but still faster get_beacon_proposer_index()/compute_proposer_index() approach; add some abstraction layer for accessing the shuffled validator indices cache
* reduce integer type conversions
* remove most of rest of integer type conversion in compute_proposer_index()
This also assigns precise types to the constants in the minimal
and mainnet presets in order to reduce the chance of compilation
errors when custom presets are used (previously, only the custom
presets have precisely assigned types for the constants).
* switch state transition caching usage to shuffled active validator indices to match EpochRef
* refactor the EpochRef -> StateCache transformation; elide pointless mapIt
* limit state passed between get_beacon_committee(...) and compute_committee(...)
* tweaks
* plumbing between block pool and state transition functions around active validator indices and committees
* have shared epochrefs followed by blockref tree while allowing for skipped slots
* factor out the epoch info extraction; document how the EpochRef follows forks
- we have a new binary which connects via RPC to the respective BN and has an internal clock - waking it up on every slot
- the BN has a new option called --external-validators and currently in order to have the VC binaries to run we need to pass EXTERNAL_VALIDATORS=yes to make
- factored some code out of beacon_node.nim for easier reuse in validator_api.nim and validator_client.nim
- the VC loads its associated private keys from the datadir for its BN
- most of the validator API calls have been implemented as a stub.
- the VC polls its BN at the start of each epoch - getting a list of all active validators for the current epoch - and then continues to request blocks and sign them with its appropriate validators when necessary
* add another check for inconsistent aggregation and committee length, since ncli_transition bypasses process_attestation(...)/check_attestation(...) and calls almost directly into process_epoch(...)
* bump validator functions to v0.11.1 spec references
* bump some spec references to v0.11.1
* poke
* remove all but one UnusedImport warning
* bump a few more spec version references from v0.10.1 to v0.11.1
* more v0.10.1 spec reference updates/removals
* yet more v0.10.1 spec reference updates
Jacek Sieka
tersec
zah
Viktor Kirilov