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Feature #17298

open

Ractor's basket communication APIs

Added by ko1 (Koichi Sasada) about 4 years ago. Updated about 4 years ago.

Status:
Open
Assignee:
-
Target version:
-
[ruby-core:100673]

Description

This ticket proposes send_basket/receive_basket, yield_basket/take_basket APIs to make effective and flexible bridge ractors.

Background

When we want to send an object as a message, we usually need to copy it. Copying is achieved according to marshal protocol, and the receiver loads it immediately.

If we want to make a bridge ractor that receives a message and sends it to another ractor, immediate loading is not effective.

bridge = Ractor.new do
  Ractor.yield Ractor.receive
end

consumer = Ractor.new bridge do |from|
  obj = from.take
  do_task(obj)
end

msg = [1, 2, 3]
bridge.send msg

In this case, the array ([1, 2, 3]) is

  • (1) dumped at the first bridge.send msg
  • (2) loaded at Ractor.receive
  • (3) dumped again at Ractor.yield
  • (4) loaded at from.take

Essentially, we only need one dump/load pair, but now it needs two pairs.

Mixing "moving" status is more complex. Now there is no way to pass the "moving" status to bridge ractors, so we cannot make a moving bridge.

Proposal

To make more effective and flexible bridge ractors, we propose new basket APIs

  • Ractor.receive_basket
  • Ractor#send_basket
  • Ractor#take_basket
  • Ractor.yield_basket

They receive a message, retains the dumped state, and sends it without dumping again. We can rewrite the above example with these APIs.

bridge = Ractor.new do
  Ractor.yield_basket Ractor.receive_basket
end

consumer = Ractor.new bridge do |from|
  obj = from.take
  do_task(obj)
end

msg = [1, 2, 3]
bridge.send msg

In this case,

  • (1) dumped at the first bridge.send msg
  • (2) loaded at from.take

we only need one dump/load pair.

Implementation

https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/3725

Evaluation

The following program makes four types of bridges and passes an array as a message through them.

USE_BASKET = false

receive2yield = Ractor.new do
  loop do
    if USE_BASKET
      Ractor.yield_basket Ractor.receive_basket
    else
      Ractor.yield Ractor.receive
    end
  end
end

receive2send = Ractor.new receive2yield do |r|
  loop do
    if USE_BASKET
      r.send_basket Ractor.receive_basket
    else
      r.send Ractor.receive
    end
  end
end

take2yield = Ractor.new receive2yield do |from|
  loop do
    if USE_BASKET
      Ractor.yield_basket from.take_basket
    else
      Ractor.yield from.take
    end
  end
end

take2send = Ractor.new take2yield, Ractor.current do |from, to|
  loop do
    if USE_BASKET
      to.send_basket from.take_basket
    else
      to.send from.take
    end
  end
end

AN = 1_000
LN = 10_000

ary = Array.new(AN) # 1000
LN.times{
  receive2send << ary
  Ractor.receive
}

# This program passes the message as:
#   main ->
#   receive2send ->
#   receive2yield ->
#   take2yield ->
#   take2send ->
#   main

The result is:

w/ basket API   0m2.056s
w/o basket API  0m5.974s

on my machine (=~ x3 faster).

(BTW, if we have a TVar, we can change the value USE_BASKET dynamically)

Discussion

Naming

Of course, naming is an issue. Now, I named it "_basket" because the source code uses this terminology. There are other candidates:

  • container metaphor
    • package
    • parcel
    • box
    • envelope
    • packet (maybe bad idea because of confusion of networking)
    • bundle (maybe bad idea because of confusion of bin/bundle)
  • "don't touch the content" metaphor
    • raw
    • sealed
    • unopened

I like "basket" because I like picnic.

Feature

Now, basket is represented by "Ractor::Basket" and there are no methods. We can add the following feature:

  • Ractor::Basket#sender returns the sending ractor.
  • Ractor::Basket#sender = a_ractor changes the sending ractor.
  • Ractor::Basket#value returns the content.

There was another proposal Ractor.recvfrom, but we only need these APIs.

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