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[PATCH 0/7] Refactor qsort implementation
- From: Adhemerval Zanella <adhemerval dot zanella at linaro dot org>
- To: libc-alpha at sourceware dot org
- Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 15:53:15 -0200
- Subject: [PATCH 0/7] Refactor qsort implementation
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
This patchset refactor the qsort implementation to fix some long standing
issues, add more tests coverage, and a default benchmark. The main changes
are:
- Use quicksort as default to avoid potentially calling malloc.
- Convert the qsort tests to libsupport and add qsort_r tests.
- Add a qsort benchmark.
The reason to remove mergesort usage on qsort is to avoid malloc usage and
the logici to decide whether to switch to quicksort (which requires issue
syscalls to get total system physical memory). It also simplifies the
implementation and make it fully AS-Safe and AC-Safe (since quicksort
implementation uses O(1) space allocated on stack due the total number
of possible elements constraint).
I have checked smoothsort algorithm as a possible alternative implementation
that also have O(1) space usage, however it is faster only for already sorted
input being slower for random, mostly sorted or repeated inputs. For reference
I have pushed the implementation I measured against on personal branch [1].
The quicksort have the disvantage of O(n^2) as worse case, however
current glibc implementation seems to have handle the pivot selection
in suitable way. Comparing current GLIBC performance using the proposed
benchmark in this patchset (which contains the BZ#21719 [2] issue) against
the resulting implementation I see for x86_64 (i7-4790K, gcc 7.2.1):
Results for member size 4
Sorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 1488 | 1257 | -15.52
4096| 262961 | 302235 | 14.94
32768| 2481627 | 3020728 | 21.72
524288| 47154892 | 59306436 | 25.77
Repeated
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 1955 | 1873 | -4.19
4096| 911947 | 904864 | -0.78
32768| 8775122 | 8542801 | -2.65
524288| 176944163 | 168426795 | -4.81
MostlySorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 1699 | 1776 | 4.53
4096| 495316 | 709937 | 43.33
32768| 5136835 | 6855890 | 33.47
524288| 102572259 | 129385161 | 26.14
Unsorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 2055 | 1941 | -5.55
4096| 916862 | 969021 | 5.69
32768| 9380553 | 9462116 | 0.87
524288| 190338891 | 186560908 | -1.98
Results for member size 8
Sorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 1431 | 1205 | -15.79
4096| 277474 | 325554 | 17.33
32768| 2740730 | 3264125 | 19.10
524288| 54565602 | 66107684 | 21.15
Repeated
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 2201 | 2118 | -3.77
4096| 893247 | 979114 | 9.61
32768| 9284822 | 9028606 | -2.76
524288| 185279216 | 174903867 | -5.60
MostlySorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 1852 | 2346 | 26.67
4096| 536032 | 759158 | 41.63
32768| 5654647 | 7810444 | 38.12
524288| 113271181 | 135900146 | 19.98
Unsorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 5585 | 2301 | -58.80
4096| 987922 | 1014018 | 2.64
32768| 9685917 | 9888078 | 2.09
524288| 198097197 | 192479957 | -2.84
Results for member size 32
Sorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 4098 | 1184 | -71.11
4096| 1119484 | 325865 | -70.89
32768| 11233415 | 3331750 | -70.34
524288| 236345467 | 69067176 | -70.78
Repeated
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 5754 | 4813 | -16.35
4096| 2348098 | 1624137 | -30.83
32768| 24567198 | 15896739 | -35.29
524288| 524545398 | 316328778 | -39.69
MostlySorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 5106 | 5332 | 4.43
4096| 1946236 | 1312703 | -32.55
32768| 20692983 | 12360726 | -40.27
524288| 448701099 | 231603294 | -48.38
Unsorted
nmemb | base | patched | diff
32| 6116 | 6047 | -1.13
4096| 2508786 | 1695241 | -32.43
32768| 25171790 | 16430388 | -34.73
524288| 535393549 | 329496913 | -38.46
So it is performance decrease ranging from 15% to 45%, mainly for
sorted kind inputs, for array members of 4 and 8 (from my analysis
to create the benchtest seems to most used kind of input) which
I think it is acceptable considering the advantages of a qsort
with constant extra memory requirements (around 1336 bytes for
x86_64 and generic type size).
I also pushed this patchset in a personal branch [3].
[1] https://sourceware.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glibc.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/azanella/qsort-smooth
[2] https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21719
[3] https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/azanella/qsort-refactor
Adhemerval Zanella (7):
stdlib: Adjust tst-qsort{2} to libsupport
support: Add Mersenne Twister pseudo-random number generator
benchtests: Add bench-qsort
stdlib: Add more qsort{_r} coverage
stdlib: Remove use of mergesort on qsort
stdlib: Optimization qsort{_r} swap implementation
stdlib: Remove undefined behavior from qsort implementation
benchtests/Makefile | 2 +-
benchtests/bench-qsort.c | 352 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
manual/argp.texi | 2 +-
manual/locale.texi | 3 +-
manual/search.texi | 7 +-
stdlib/Makefile | 11 +-
stdlib/msort.c | 310 -------------------------------------
stdlib/qsort.c | 262 ++++++++------------------------
stdlib/qsort_common.c | 225 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
stdlib/tst-qsort.c | 45 +++---
stdlib/tst-qsort2.c | 44 +++---
stdlib/tst-qsort3.c | 231 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
support/Makefile | 2 +
support/support_random.c | 219 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
support/support_random.h | 109 ++++++++++++++
support/tst-support_random.c | 87 +++++++++++
16 files changed, 1339 insertions(+), 572 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 benchtests/bench-qsort.c
delete mode 100644 stdlib/msort.c
create mode 100644 stdlib/qsort_common.c
create mode 100644 stdlib/tst-qsort3.c
create mode 100644 support/support_random.c
create mode 100644 support/support_random.h
create mode 100644 support/tst-support_random.c
--
2.7.4