[Python-Dev] The untuned tunable parameter ARENA_SIZE

Larry Hastings larry at hastings.org
Thu Jun 1 03:38:09 EDT 2017



When CPython's small block allocator was first merged in late February 
2001, it allocated memory in gigantic chunks it called "arenas".  These 
arenas were a massive 256 KILOBYTES apiece.

This tunable parameter has not been touched in the intervening 16 
years.  Yet CPython's memory consumption continues to grow.  By the time 
a current "trunk" build of CPython reaches the REPL prompt it's already 
allocated 16 arenas.

I propose we make the arena size larger.  By how much?  I asked Victor 
to run some benchmarks with arenas of 1mb, 2mb, and 4mb.  The results 
with 1mb and 2mb were mixed, but his benchmarks with a 4mb arena size 
showed measurable (>5%) speedups on ten benchmarks and no slowdowns.

What would be the result of making the arena size 4mb?

  * CPython could no longer run on a computer where at startup it could
    not allocate at least one 4mb continguous block of memory.
  * CPython programs would die slightly sooner in out-of-memory conditions.
  * CPython programs would use more memory.  How much?  Hard to say.  It
    depends on their allocation strategy.  I suspect most of the time it
    would be < 3mb additional memory.  But for pathological allocation
    strategies the difference could be significant.  (e.g: lots of
    allocs, followed by lots of frees, but the occasional object lives
    forever, which means that the arena it's in can never be freed.  If
    1 out of ever 16 256k arenas is kept alive this way, and the objects
    are spaced out precisely such that now it's 1 for every 4mb arena,
    max memory use would be the same but later stable memory use would
    hypothetically be 16x current)
  * Many programs would be slightly faster now and then, simply because
    we call malloc() 1/16 as often.


What say you?  Vote for your favorite color of bikeshed now!


//arry/

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