Brought back lazy grafting, but not too lazy

Continued benchmarking efforts are indicating this isn't really an
optional optimization.

This brings back lazy grafting, where the file leaf is allowed to fall
out-of-date to minimize bshrub/btree updates. This is controlled by
LFS3_o_UNGRAFT, which is similar, but independent from LFS3_o_UNCRYST:

- LFS3_o_UNCRYST - File's leaf not fully crystallized
- LFS3_o_UNGRAFT - File's leaf does not match disk

Note it makes sense for files to be UNGRAFT only, in the case where the
current crystal terminates at the end-of-file but future appends are
likely. And it makes sense for files to be UNCRYST only, in cases where
we graft uncrystallized blocks so the bshrub/btree makes sense.

Which brings us to the main change from the previous lazy-grafting
implementation: lfs3_file_lookupnext no longer includes ungrafted
leaves.

Instead, functions should call lfs3_file_graft if they need
lfs3_file_lookupnext to make sense.

This significantly reduces the code cost of lazy grafting, at the risk
of needing to graft more frequently. Fortunately we don't actually need
to call lfs3_file_graft all that often:

- lfs3_file_read already flushes caches/leaves before attempting any
  bshrub/btree reads for simplicity (heavy are not currently considered
  a priority, if you need this consider opening two file handles).

- lfs3_file_flush_ _does_ need to call lfs3_file_graft before the
  crystallization heuristic pokes, but if we can't resume
  crystallization, we would probably need to graft the crystal to
  satisfy the flush anyways.

---

Lazy grafting, i.e. procrastinating on bshrub/btree updates during block
appends, is an optimization previously dropped due to perceived
nicheness:

- We can only lazily graft blocks, inlined data fragments always require
  bshrub/btree updates since they live in the bshrub/btree.

- Sync forces bshrub/btree updates anyways, so lazy grafting has no
  benefit for most logging applications.

- This performance penalty of eagerly grafting goes away if your caches
  are large enough.

Note that the last argument is a non-argument in littlefs's case. They
whole point of littlefs is that you _don't_ need RAM to fix things.

However these arguments are all moot when you consider that the "niche
use case" -- linear file writes -- is the default bottleneck for most
applications. Any file operation becomes a linear write bottleneck when
the arguments are large enough. And this becomes a noticeable issue when
benchmarking.

So... This brings back lazy grafting. But with a more limited scope
w.r.t. internal file operations (the above lfs3_file_lookupnext/
lfs3_file_graft changes).

---

Long story short, lazy grafting is back again, reverting the ~3x
performance regression for linear file writes.

But now with quite a bit less code/stack cost:

           code          stack          ctx
  before: 36820           2368          684
  after:  37032 (+0.6%)   2352 (-0.7%)  684 (+0.0%)
This commit is contained in:
Christopher Haster
2025-08-04 15:43:57 -05:00
parent 68424f8cda
commit 58c5506e85
3 changed files with 181 additions and 67 deletions
+2 -1
View File
@@ -145,7 +145,8 @@ enum lfs3_type {
#define LFS3_o_UNCREAT 0x02000000 // File does not exist yet
#define LFS3_o_UNSYNC 0x01000000 // File's metadata does not match disk
#define LFS3_o_UNCRYST 0x00800000 // File's leaf not fully crystallized
#define LFS3_o_UNFLUSH 0x00400000 // File's cache does not match disk
#define LFS3_o_UNGRAFT 0x00400000 // File's leaf does not match disk
#define LFS3_o_UNFLUSH 0x00200000 // File's cache does not match disk
// File seek flags
#define LFS3_SEEK_SET 0 // Seek relative to an absolute position