Since the protocol encodes timestamps differently depending on the
message, the code currently decodes into a local variable and then
converts it to a time.Time. However, this causes an allocation due to
the local having to escape to the heap in order for the readElement
function to write to it.
So, in order to avoid that, this introduces two new types for a
timestamp named uint32Time and int64Time that are encoded as the
respective type on the read. When calling the readElements function,
the time.Time field in the message is cast to a pointer of the
appropriate type which effectively allows the allocations to be avoided.
The following is a before and after comparison of the allocations
with the benchmarks that did not change removed:
benchmark old allocs new allocs delta
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ReadBlockHeader 1 0 -100.00%
DecodeHeaders 4001 2001 -49.99%
DecodeAddr 4001 3001 -24.99%
DecodeMerkleBlock 108 107 -0.93%
This introduces a new binary free list which provides a concurrent safe
list of unused buffers for the purpose of serializing and deserializing
primitive integers to their raw binary bytes.
For convenience, the type also provides functions for each of the
primitive unsigned integers that automatically obtain a buffer from the
free list, perform the necessary binary conversion, read from or write
to the given io.Reader or io.Writer, and return the buffer to the free
list.
A global instance of the type has been introduced with a maximum number
of 1024 items. Since each buffer is 8 bytes, it will consume a maximum
of 8KB. Theoretically, this value would only allow up to 1024 peers
simultaneously reading and writing without having to resort to burdening
the garbage collector with additional allocations. However, due to the
fact the code is designed in such a way that the buffers are quickly
used and returned to the free list, in practice it can support much more
than 1024 peers without involving the garbage collector since it is
highly unlikely every peer would need a buffer at the exact same time.
The following is a before and after comparison of the allocations
with the benchmarks that did not change removed:
benchmark old allocs new allocs delta
-------------------------------------------------------------
WriteVarInt1 1 0 -100.00%
WriteVarInt3 1 0 -100.00%
WriteVarInt5 1 0 -100.00%
WriteVarInt9 1 0 -100.00%
ReadVarInt1 1 0 -100.00%
ReadVarInt3 1 0 -100.00%
ReadVarInt5 1 0 -100.00%
ReadVarInt9 1 0 -100.00%
ReadVarStr4 3 2 -33.33%
ReadVarStr10 3 2 -33.33%
WriteVarStr4 2 1 -50.00%
WriteVarStr10 2 1 -50.00%
ReadOutPoint 1 0 -100.00%
WriteOutPoint 1 0 -100.00%
ReadTxOut 3 1 -66.67%
WriteTxOut 2 0 -100.00%
ReadTxIn 5 2 -60.00%
WriteTxIn 3 0 -100.00%
DeserializeTxSmall 15 7 -53.33%
DeserializeTxLarge 33428 16715 -50.00%
SerializeTx 8 0 -100.00%
ReadBlockHeader 7 1 -85.71%
WriteBlockHeader 10 4 -60.00%
DecodeGetHeaders 1004 501 -50.10%
DecodeHeaders 18002 4001 -77.77%
DecodeGetBlocks 1004 501 -50.10%
DecodeAddr 9002 4001 -55.55%
DecodeInv 150005 50003 -66.67%
DecodeNotFound 150004 50002 -66.67%
DecodeMerkleBlock 222 108 -51.35%
TxSha 10 2 -80.00%
This adds decode benchmarks for several of the messages that profiling
has identified to cause a lot of allocations in addition to those that
already exist. By adding these benchmarks, it makes it easier to get
allocation and speed statistics which can in turn be used to compare
future improvements.
The following bencharmarks have been added:
DecodeGetHeaders, DecodeHeaders, DecodeGetBlocks, DecodeAddr, DecodeInv,
DecodeNotFound, and DecodeMerkleBlock
For reference, here is the benchmark data as of this commit.
DecodeGetHeaders 93261 ns/op 24120 B/op 1004 allocs/op
DecodeHeaders 2071263 ns/op 368399 B/op 18002 allocs/op
DecodeGetBlocks 92486 ns/op 24120 B/op 1004 allocs/op
DecodeAddr 850608 ns/op 136202 B/op 9002 allocs/op
DecodeInv 17107172 ns/op 3601447 B/op 150004 allocs/op
DecodeNotFound 17522225 ns/op 3601444 B/op 150004 allocs/op
DecodeMerkleBlock 21062 ns/op 5192 B/op 222 allocs/op
This modifies the benchmarks in the wire package to avoid creating a new
reader for each iteration. This is useful since it means that showing
the memory allocations will only show the function under test instead of
the allocation for the benchmark setup as well.
The following is a before and after comparison of the allocations
with the benchmarks that did not change removed:
benchmark old allocs new allocs delta
------------------------------------------------------------
ReadVarInt1 2 1 -50.00%
ReadVarInt3 2 1 -50.00%
ReadVarInt5 2 1 -50.00%
ReadVarInt9 2 1 -50.00%
ReadVarStr4 4 3 -25.00%
ReadVarStr10 4 3 -25.00%
ReadOutPoint 2 1 -50.00%
ReadTxOut 4 3 -25.00%
ReadTxIn 6 5 -16.67%
DeserializeTxSmall 16 15 -6.25%
DeserializeTxLarge 33430 33428 -0.01%
ReadBlockHeader 8 7 -12.50%
This adds a benchmark for deserializing a large transaction that is
often referred to as the megatransaction since it is the largest Bitcoin
transaction mined to date. It consists of 5569 inputs and 1 output and
its hash is:
bb41a757f405890fb0f5856228e23b715702d714d59bf2b1feb70d8b2b4e3e08.
This is being done so there is a benchmark that tests more of a
worst-case scenario which is a better candidate for identifying and
testing improvements.
The following benchmark results shows the how much more intensive this
transaction is over the existing mock transaction:
DeserializeTxSmall 1000000 1751 ns/op 376 B/op 16 allocs/op
DeserializeTxLarge 300 5093980 ns/op 1672829 B/op 33430 allocs/op
This commit is the first stage of several that are planned to convert
the blockchain package into a concurrent safe package that will
ultimately allow support for multi-peer download and concurrent chain
processing. The goal is to update btcd proper after each step so it can
take advantage of the enhancements as they are developed.
In addition to the aforementioned benefit, this staged approach has been
chosen since it is absolutely critical to maintain consensus.
Separating the changes into several stages makes it easier for reviewers
to logically follow what is happening and therefore helps prevent
consensus bugs. Naturally there are significant automated tests to help
prevent consensus issues as well.
The main focus of this stage is to convert the blockchain package to use
the new database interface and implement the chain-related functionality
which it no longer handles. It also aims to improve efficiency in
various areas by making use of the new database and chain capabilities.
The following is an overview of the chain changes:
- Update to use the new database interface
- Add chain-related functionality that the old database used to handle
- Main chain structure and state
- Transaction spend tracking
- Implement a new pruned unspent transaction output (utxo) set
- Provides efficient direct access to the unspent transaction outputs
- Uses a domain specific compression algorithm that understands the
standard transaction scripts in order to significantly compress them
- Removes reliance on the transaction index and paves the way toward
eventually enabling block pruning
- Modify the New function to accept a Config struct instead of
inidividual parameters
- Replace the old TxStore type with a new UtxoViewpoint type that makes
use of the new pruned utxo set
- Convert code to treat the new UtxoViewpoint as a rolling view that is
used between connects and disconnects to improve efficiency
- Make best chain state always set when the chain instance is created
- Remove now unnecessary logic for dealing with unset best state
- Make all exported functions concurrent safe
- Currently using a single chain state lock as it provides a straight
forward and easy to review path forward however this can be improved
with more fine grained locking
- Optimize various cases where full blocks were being loaded when only
the header is needed to help reduce the I/O load
- Add the ability for callers to get a snapshot of the current best
chain stats in a concurrent safe fashion
- Does not block callers while new blocks are being processed
- Make error messages that reference transaction outputs consistently
use <transaction hash>:<output index>
- Introduce a new AssertError type an convert internal consistency
checks to use it
- Update tests and examples to reflect the changes
- Add a full suite of tests to ensure correct functionality of the new
code
The following is an overview of the btcd changes:
- Update to use the new database and chain interfaces
- Temporarily remove all code related to the transaction index
- Temporarily remove all code related to the address index
- Convert all code that uses transaction stores to use the new utxo
view
- Rework several calls that required the block manager for safe
concurrency to use the chain package directly now that it is
concurrent safe
- Change all calls to obtain the best hash to use the new best state
snapshot capability from the chain package
- Remove workaround for limits on fetching height ranges since the new
database interface no longer imposes them
- Correct the gettxout RPC handler to return the best chain hash as
opposed the hash the txout was found in
- Optimize various RPC handlers:
- Change several of the RPC handlers to use the new chain snapshot
capability to avoid needlessly loading data
- Update several handlers to use new functionality to avoid accessing
the block manager so they are able to return the data without
blocking when the server is busy processing blocks
- Update non-verbose getblock to avoid deserialization and
serialization overhead
- Update getblockheader to request the block height directly from
chain and only load the header
- Update getdifficulty to use the new cached data from chain
- Update getmininginfo to use the new cached data from chain
- Update non-verbose getrawtransaction to avoid deserialization and
serialization overhead
- Update gettxout to use the new utxo store versus loading
full transactions using the transaction index
The following is an overview of the utility changes:
- Update addblock to use the new database and chain interfaces
- Update findcheckpoint to use the new database and chain interfaces
- Remove the dropafter utility which is no longer supported
NOTE: The transaction index and address index will be reimplemented in
another commit.
This implements the wire protocol encoding portion of a new
sendheaders message as described by BIP0130. It purpose is to request
that a peer sends header commands instead of inv commands when
announcing new blocks. This includes a protocol version bump to 70012
and a wire version bump to 0.4.0.
Note that this does not implement logic to handle the command in btcd,
rather it only makes the command available at the wire protocol level.
A future commit which honors the command and therefore provides full
BIP0130 support is still required.
First, it removes the documentation section from all the README.md files
and instead puts a web-based godoc badge and link at the top with the
other badges. This is being done since the local godoc tool no longer
ships with Go by default, so the instructions no longer work without
first installing godoc. Due to this, pretty much everyone uses the
web-based godoc these days anyways. Anyone who has manually installed
godoc won't need instructions.
Second, it makes sure the ISC license badge is at the top with the other
badges and removes the textual reference in the overview section.
Finally, it's modifies the Installation section to Installation and
Updating and adds a '-u' to the 'go get' command since it works for both
and thus is simpler.
Also, update TravisCI goclean script to remove the special casing which
ignored 'Id' from the lint output since that exception is no longer
needed. It was previously required due to the old version of btcjson,
but that is no longer in the repo.
This commit exports the ReadVarString and WriteVarString functions so
they are available for callers to use.
A variable length string is encoded as a variable length integer
containing the length of the string followed by the bytes that represent
the string itself.
SFNodeBloom is a new service flag that a node is required to use to
indicate that it supports bloom filtering. This includes a protocol
version bump to 70011 and a wire version bump to 0.3.0.
btcd:
The SFNodeBloom flag is set by default. A new configuration option
--nopeerbloomfilters has been added to to disable bloom filtering.
Any node advertising a version greater than or equal to 70011 that
attempts to use bloom filtering will be disconnected if bloom
filtering is disabled.
This mimics Bitcoin Core commit afb0ccaf9c9e4e8fac7db3564c4e19c9218c6b03
The Bitcoin wire protocol includes several fields with their lengths
encoded according to a variable length integer encoding scheme that does
not enforce a unique encoding for all numbers.
This can lead to a situation where deserializing and re-serializing the
same data can result in different bytes. There are no currently known
issues due to this, but it is safer to reject such subtle differences as
they could potentially lead to exploits.
Consequently, this commit modifies the varint decoding function to error
when the value is not canonically encoded which effectively means that
all messages with varints that are not canonically encoded will now be
rejected. This will not cause issues with old client versions in
regards to blocks and transactions since the data is deserialized into
memory and then reserialized before being relayed thereby effectively
erasing any non-canonical encodings.
Also, new tests have been added to ensure non-canonical encodings are
properly rejected and exercise the new code, and the default user agent
version for wire has been bumped to version 0.2.1 to differentiate the
new behavior.
The equivalent logic was implemented in Bitcoin Core by PR 2884.
At the current time, there is no difference between the wire encoding
at protocol version 0 and the stable long-term storage format. These
methods are simply for consistency with the other types.
This commit updates the wire tests for transactions which force
serialization and deserialization errors to force an error in the the
transaction lock time path.
This brings the wire test coverage back up to 100%.
This commit removes the error returns from the BlockHeader.BlockSha,
MsgBlock.BlockSha, and MsgTx.TxSha functions since they can never fail and
end up causing a lot of unneeded error checking throughout the code base.
It also updates all call sites for the change.
This commit adds a new function which is similar to the DoubleSha256
function except it returns a ShaHash copy instead of a byte slice. It
also adds a new benchmark for it.
This can be a slight optimization in certain cases where the caller
ultimately wants a ShaHash since it can avoid a heap allocation and
additional copy to convert the result to a ShaHash (the function simply
performs a type cast against the returned array which is not possible
against a []byte).
existing: DoubleSha256 500000 3081 ns/op 32 B/op 1 allocs/op
new: DoubleSha256SH 500000 2939 ns/op 0 B/op 0 allocs/op
The hashing functions for blocks and transactions have also been updated
to make use of the new function since they directly return the ShaHash.
The transaction change in particular is quite useful since transactions
are frequently hashed and this change allows all of those hashes to avoid
an additional heap allocation.
This commit contains three classes of optimizations:
- Reducing the number of unnecessary hash copies
- Improve the performance of the DoubleSha256 function
- A couple of minor optimizations of the ShaHash functions
The first class is a result of the Bytes function on a ShaHash making a
copy of the bytes before returning them. It really should have been named
CloneBytes, but that would break the API now.
To address this, a comment has been added to the function which explicitly
calls out the copy behavior. In addition, all call sites of .Bytes on a
ShaHash in the code base have been updated to simply slice the array when
a copy is not needed. This saves a significant amount of data copying.
The second optimization modifies the DoubleSha256 function to directly use
fastsha256.Sum256 instead of the hasher interface. This reduces the
number of allocations needed. A benchmark for the function has been added
as well.
old: BenchmarkDoubleSha256 500000 3691 ns/op 192 B/op 3 allocs/op
new: BenchmarkDoubleSha256 500000 3081 ns/op 32 B/op 1 allocs/op
The final optimizations are for the ShaHash IsEqual and SetBytes functions
which have been modified to make use of the fact the type is an array and
remove an unneeded subslice.
This commit provides a new function named PkScriptLocs on the MsgTx type
which can be used to efficiently retrieve a list of offsets for the public
key scripts for the serialized form of the transaction.
This is useful for certain applications which store fully serialized
transactions and want to be able to quickly index into the serialized
transaction to extract a give public key script directly thereby avoiding
the need to deserialize the entire transaction.
This commit contains the entire btcwire repository along with several
changes needed to move all of the files into the wire directory in
order to prepare it for merging. This does NOT update btcd or any of the
other packages to use the new location as that will be done separately.
- All import paths in the old btcwire test files have been changed to the
new location
- All references to btcwire as the package name have been chagned to
wire
- The coveralls badge has been removed since it unfortunately doesn't
support coverage of sub-packages
This is ongoing work toward #214.
