work-force.hpp File Reference

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Description

A pool of workers for multithreaded rendering.

The Lumiera Render Engine is driven by active workers repeatedly pulling the next planned chunk of work; maintaining the internal organisation of the Scheduler is integrated into that pattern as just another activity performed by the workers. As a consequence, there is no need for a central »master« or coordinator to dispatch individual jobs. As long as the worker pool holds active workers, the engine is in running state.

The WorkForce (worker pool service) in turn is passive and fulfils the purpose of holding storage for the active worker objects in a list, pruning terminated entries. Some parameters and configuration is provided to the workers, notably a work functor invoked actively to »pull« work. The return value from this doWork()-function governs the worker's behaviour, either by prompting to pull further work, by sending a worker into a sleep cycle, perform contention mitigation, or even asking the worker to terminate.

Warning

concurrency and synchronisation in the Scheduler (which maintains and operates WorkForce) is based on the assumption that all maintenance and organisational work is done chunk-wise by a single worker. Other render activities may proceed in parallel, yet any other worker about to pick the next task has to wait until it is possible to grab the GroomingToken exclusively. For the WorkForce this usage pattern implies that there is no explicit synchronisation – scaling up and shutting down must be performed non-concurrently.

See also

work-force-test.cpp

scheduler-commutator.hpp usage as part of the Scheduler

Definition in file work-force.hpp.

#include "vault/common.hpp"
#include "vault/gear/activity.hpp"
#include "lib/meta/function.hpp"
#include "lib/thread.hpp"
#include "lib/nocopy.hpp"
#include "lib/util.hpp"
#include <utility>
#include <chrono>
#include <atomic>
#include <list>

Classes
struct	Config
	Base for configuration of the worker pool. More...
class	Worker< CONF >
	Individual worker thread: repeatedly pulls the doWork functor. More...
class	WorkForce< CONF >
	Pool of worker threads for rendering. More...

Typedefs
using	Launch = lib::Thread::Launch
using	SIG_FinalHook = void(bool)
	config should define callable invoked at exit (argument: isFailure)
using	SIG_WorkFun = activity::Proc(void)
	config should define a callable with this signature to perform work

Functions
void	performRandomisedSpin (size_t, size_t)
	This is part of the weak level of anti-contention measures. More...
microseconds	steppedRandDelay (size_t, size_t)
	Calculate the delay time for a stronger anti-contention wait. More...
size_t	thisThreadHash ()

Variables
const size_t	CONTEND_RANDOM_STEP = 11
	stepping for randomisation of anti-contention measures
const size_t	CONTEND_SATURATION = CONTEND_STARK_LIMIT + 4
	upper limit for the contention event count
const size_t	CONTEND_SOFT_FACTOR = 100
	base counter for a spinning wait loop
const size_t	CONTEND_SOFT_LIMIT = 3
	zone for soft anti-contention measures, counting continued contention events
const size_t	CONTEND_STARK_LIMIT = CONTEND_SOFT_LIMIT + 5
	zone for stark measures, performing a sleep with exponential stepping
const microseconds	CONTEND_WAIT = 100us
	base time unit for the exponentially stepped-up sleep delay in case of contention
const double	MAX_OVERPROVISIONING = 3.0
	safety guard to prevent catastrophic over-provisioning

Namespaces
	vault
	Vault-Layer implementation namespace root.
	vault::gear
	Active working gear and plumbing.

Function Documentation

performRandomisedSpin()

void performRandomisedSpin	(	size_t	stepping,
		size_t	randFact
	)

This is part of the weak level of anti-contention measures.

When a worker is kicked out from processing due to contention, the immediate reaction is to try again; if this happens repeatedly however, increasingly strong delays are interspersed. Within the weak zone, a short spinning wait is performed, and then the thread requests a yield() from the OS scheduler; this cycle is repeated.

Definition at line 66 of file work-force.cpp.

References vault::gear::anonymous_namespace{work-force.hpp}::CONTEND_SOFT_FACTOR.

steppedRandDelay()

microseconds steppedRandDelay	(	size_t	stepping,
		size_t	randFact
	)

Calculate the delay time for a stronger anti-contention wait.

If the contention lasts, the worker must back out temporarily to allow other workers to catch up. The delay time is stepped up quickly up to a saturation level, where the worker sleeps in the microseconds range — this level is chosen as a balance between retaining some reactivity vs not incurring additional load. The stepping of the anti-contention measures is »sticky« to some degree, because it is not set to zero, once contention ends, but rather stepped down gradually.

Definition at line 82 of file work-force.cpp.

References vault::gear::anonymous_namespace{work-force.hpp}::CONTEND_WAIT.