Reverse execution is slow with thousands of threads
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- Dominant language
- C++
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Description
Creating a checkpoint isn't too bad, but when we reverse-execute we have to finish initializing checkpoints (creating thousands of threads) and usually destroy some of them (destroying thousands of threads) and this is pretty slow.
I think the best way to fix this would be to lazily (re)create ReplayTasks from a checkpoint only when we need to run them. If we did this we would probably just remove the current lazy session initialization because we'd be doing it on a per-task basis instead.
That would be a somewhat scary change though.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by tracing reverse execution through checkpoint initialization and ReplayTask/session initialization, then measure the cost of creating and destroying thousands of threads. Done means reverse execution avoids unnecessary ReplayTask creation while preserving correct checkpoint behavior and improving the large-thread-count case.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- cpp, linux
- Domain
- operating-systems, performance
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 28/100