Issue #20861 has been reported by tenderlovemaking (Aaron Patterson). ---------------------------------------- Feature #20861: Add an environment variable for tuning the default thread quantum https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20861 * Author: tenderlovemaking (Aaron Patterson) * Status: Open ---------------------------------------- The default thread quantum is currently [hard coded at 100ms](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/c7708d22c33040a74ea7ac683bf7407d3759edfe/t...). This can impact multithreaded systems that are trying to process Ruby level CPU bound work at the same time as IO work. I would like to add an environment variable `RUBY_THREAD_DEFAULT_QUANTUM_MS` that allows users to specify the default thread quantum (in milliseconds) via an environment variable. It defaults to our current default of 100ms. I've submitted the patch [here](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/11981). Here is a Ruby program to demonstrate the problem: ```ruby def measure x = Process.clock_gettime(Process::CLOCK_MONOTONIC) yield Process.clock_gettime(Process::CLOCK_MONOTONIC) - x end def fib(n) if n < 2 n else fib(n-2) + fib(n-1) end end # find fib that takes ~500ms fib_i = 50.times.find { |i| measure { fib(i) } >= 0.05 } sleep_i = measure { fib(fib_i) } threads = [ Thread.new { 100.times { sleep(sleep_i) # sometimes stalled waiting for fib's quantum to finish } puts "done 1" }, Thread.new { 100.times { fib(fib_i) }; puts "done 2" }, ] # We expect the total time to be about 100 * sleep_i (~5 seconds) because # theoretically the sleep thread could be done nearly completely in parallel to # the fib thread. # # But because the `sleep` thread is iterating over the sleep call, it must wait # for the `fib` thread to complete its quantum, before it can start the next iteration. # # This means each sleep iteration could take up to `sleep_i + 100ms` # # We're calling that stalled time "waste" total = measure { threads.each(&:join) } waste = total - (sleep_i * 100) p TOTAL: total, WASTE: waste ``` The program has two threads. One thread is using CPU time by computing `fib` in a loop. The other thread is simulating IO time by calling `sleep` in a loop. When the `sleep` call completes, it can stall, waiting for the quantum in the fib thread to expire. That means that each iteration on sleep can actually take `sleep time + thread quantum`, or in this case ~600ms when we expected it to only take ~500ms. Ideally, the above program would take `500ms * 100` since all `sleep` calls should be able to execute in parallel with the `fib` calls. Of course this isn't true because the sleep thread must acquire the GVL before it can continue the next iteration, so there will always be _some_ overhead. This feature is for allowing people to tune that overhead. If we run this program with the default quantum the output looks like this: ``` $ ./miniruby -v fibtest.rb ruby 3.4.0dev (2024-11-01T14:49:50Z quantum-computing c7708d22c3) +PRISM [arm64-darwin24] done 2 done 1 {TOTAL: 12.672821999993175, WASTE: 4.960721996147186} ``` The output shows that our program spent about 5 seconds stalled, waiting to acquire the GVL. With this patch we can lower the default quantum, and the output is like this: ``` $ RUBY_THREAD_DEFAULT_QUANTUM_MS=10 ./miniruby -v fibtest.rb ruby 3.4.0dev (2024-11-01T22:06:35Z quantum-computing 087500643d) +PRISM [arm64-darwin24] done 2 done 1 {TOTAL: 8.898526000091806, WASTE: 1.4168260043952614} ``` Specifying the ENV to change the quantum to 10ms lowered our waste in the program to ~1.4 seconds. It's common for web applications to do mixed CPU and IO bound tasks in threads (see the Puma webserver), so it would be great if there was a way to customize the thread quantum depending on your application's workload. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/