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Shared Persistent Heap Data Environment

SPHDE is composed of two major software layers: The Shared Address Space (SAS) layer provides the basic services for a shared address space and transparent, persistent storage. The Shared Persistent Heap (SPH) layer organizes blocks of SAS storage into useful functions for storing and retrieving data.

Authors
  Steven Munroe, Ryan S. Arnold, et al.

# Rationale

The I/O subsystems, memory subsystems, and supporting APIs of current operating systems were designed for an environment of scarcity (limited real memory and virtual address spaces). Modern applications have to deal with increasingly complex data structures whose data needs to be shared among process instances and persist to storage while still being constrained by these APIs and subsystems.

Scarcity forces trade-offs between simplicity and efficiency and complicates programming tasks. This is especially true if these data structures contain internal references (pointers). Traditional file systems and relational databases simply don't handle internal reference persistence well. Data persistence to storage in these systems is not transparent and requires additional layers of software to capture the relationships represented by these references. This adds even more overhead and complexity to programming tasks.

The availability of 64-bit commodity processors, cheap high-density DRAM, and commodity operating systems effectively eliminate the original scarcity. The standard POSIX shared memory APIs (e.g., shmat, shmdt,shmctl, et al.) enable the exploitation of abundant memory, but are still not simple to use. A (relatively thin) API layer is needed to manage shared memory access across a large shared address space in a simple and coherent way.

Creating such an API is the goal of this project. The primary function is to manage backing files and memory map them into the application. For Linux, this allows data to be shared directly in the real pages of the kernel's file cache. Since the files are always mapped at the same virtual address, internal C pointers can be maintained for both inter-process sharing and transparent persistent storage. This easily supports zero-copy sharing and operate-in-place persistence.

# SAS Overview

The SAS layer manages a region of process address space to provide:

- Sharing and transparent storage persistence of data within that region by providing and managing backing file space and memory mapping the backing files for the process.
- Sharing of data within that region between cooperating processes.
- Locking primitives to provide synchronization of use/update between cooperating processes and threads.
- APIs for allocating/deallocating blocks of shared/persistent data.
- Further tools for managing blocks as data structures (heaps, stacks, indexes, etc.).

Some additional SAS definitions:

For now, the size and virtual address range of the region is fixed for each platform (somewhere beyond TASK_UNMAPPED_BASE and below the main stack). Blocks are allocated in power-of-2 size and alignment from within the region.

Backing storage (files) are allocated in power-of-2 sizes called segments. Segments must be smaller in size than the region and usually larger than blocks. Segments don't necessarily have anything to do with any notion of hardware segmentation, but it may be useful if the size/alignment of SAS segments match the underlying hardware.

A simple example of using SPHDE:

#include <sassim.h> int main () { int rc;
rc = SASJoinRegion();
if (rc)
return 1;
char *block;
// allocation a block of SPHDE data ...
block = (char*)SASBlockAlloc (4096);
// code accessing data in SPHDE region goes here.
SASCleanUp();
return 0;
}
sassim.h
Shared Address Space, base runtime for shared and persistent memory for multi-thread/multi-core appli...
SASBlockAlloc
__C__ void * SASBlockAlloc(unsigned long blockSize)
Allocate a block of memory within SAS Storage.
SASCleanUp
__C__ void SASCleanUp()
Process wide cleanup for the SAS runtime. +* +*.
SASJoinRegion
__C__ int SASJoinRegion()
Join this process to a SAS Region.

Note
  The application must first "join" a region before allocating or accessing any blocks. If the region does not exist (has no backing files), a "join" will create the initial segment (backing file) and initialize the anchor block.

By default the region's path name is either "." or the current directory. The region name can be overridden by setting the "SASSTOREPATH" environment variable, or using the SASJoinRegionByName() function. The "region" name is the path to a directory where the SAS/SPH backing files will be created.

Processes that join with the same region name will share the region and all of its (allocated) storage. All processes that share a region can allocate, deallocate, reference and update blocks (normal C pointer semantics) within the region.

Note
  To insure that segments of memory allocated by one process, can be accessed by any other process sharing a SAS Region, the SPHDE runtime establishes a sigaction handler for SIGSEGV within each process and thread. This is enabled as part of the Join process and remains enabled until the process leaves Region by calling SASCleanup. Applications that use signal/sigaction handlers should be aware of this.

Processes that use a different region name are independent from any other region and only see the region that they have joined. There is no limit to the number of independent regions per process other than those imposed by the file system. Normal file access rules apply. Any process that does not have read/write authority to the region's directory or files can not join the region or access the data.

Once a block is allocated it is backed with file storage, and implicitly mmaped for transparent storage persistence and sharing between processes. The block will always be mapped at the same virtual address each time it is loaded and for each sharing process. This allows complex pointer based data structures to be stored, persisted, and shared without additional effort (the pointers are context independent).

## Lock Manager Overview

A lock manager is provides so utilities and cooperating processes can synchronize their activities. Locks are "keyed" by virtual addresses which are normally the address of some interesting shared data structure or " utility" object.

#include <sassim.h>
#include <sasalloc.h>
#include <saslock.h>
int main ()
{
int rc;
rc = SASJoinRegion();
if (rc)
return 1;
char *block;
// primitive way to remember the root ptr
block = getSASFinder();
while (...)
{
SASLock(block, SasUserLock__WRITE);
// synchronized access to "block"
SASUnlock(block);
}
SASCleanUp();
return 0;
}
saslock.h
Shared Address Space User Locks. Address based locking for shared address space blocks and utility ob...
SASUnlock
__C__ void SASUnlock(vm_address_t addr)
UnLock a SAS Address.
SASLock
__C__ void SASLock(vm_address_t addr, sas_userlock_request_t lockT)
Lock a SAS Address.
getSASFinder
__C__ void * getSASFinder()
Get the SAS finder address.

Currently the lock manager supports (shared) SasUserLock__READ and (exclusive) SasUserLock__WRITE locks. The intent is to add other lock types as needed. For example, the index utility could use an "INTENT" lock (which allows multiple READ locks but is exclusive with other INTENT and WRITE lock) which is upgradeable to a WRITE lock.

Note
  Notice the function getSASFinder(); The SAS runtime starts with a special "anchor" block at a fixed location. The anchor block contains the indexes used to track free space and allocations. It also contains the "finder" pointer. The setSASFinder() allows t application to save a pointer to any structure of its choice. The next time that the application starts, it can use getSASFinder() to obtain the original pointer and navigation from there.

# SPH Utility Objects Overview

A simple pointer is sufficient to anchor a linked list or quadtree etc., but not very user friendly. SPHDE provides a number of utility objects. Utility objects use blocks of storage to provide higher level functions. An application could create a SASStringBTree_t or SPHContext_t and store its pointer in the finder as in the following example:

#include <sassim.h>
#include <sasalloc.h>
#include <sphcontext.h>
#include <saslock.h>
int main ()
{
int rc;
SPHContext_t finderContext;
rc = SASJoinRegion();
if (rc)
return 1;
char *block;
block = getSASFinder();
if (block)
finderContext = (SPHContext_t)block;
else
{ // first time logic, only executes once.
finderContext = SPHContextCreate(block__Size16M);
setSASFinder(finderContext);
}
// create and provide a "name" for a new image
block = (char*)SASBlockAlloc (block__Size4M);
SPHContextAddName(finderContext, "my_image_buffer", block);
SASLock(block, SasUserLock__WRITE);
// should lock the new block because is now visible to others
...
SASUnlock(block);
...
// look up an old image by "name"
block = SPHContextFindByName(finderContext, "my_old_image");
if(block)
{
SASLock(block, SasUserLock__WRITE);
...
SASUnlock(block);
}
SASCleanUp();
return 0;
}
setSASFinder
__C__ void setSASFinder(void *)
Sets the SAS finder pointer to a SAS block or utility object.
sphcontext.h
Shared Persistent Heap, name/address context for shared memory multi-thread/multi-core applications.
SPHContextAddName
__C__ int SPHContextAddName(SPHContext_t contxt, char *name, void *value)
Add a name/address mapping to this context.
SPHContextFindByName
__C__ void * SPHContextFindByName(SPHContext_t contxt, char *name)
Find the address value associated with a name within a specific context.
SPHContext_t
void * SPHContext_t
Handle to an instance of SPH Context.
Definition sphcontext.h:48
SPHContextCreate
__C__ SPHContext_t SPHContextCreate(block_size_t heap_size)
Create a name/address mapping context..

Note
  A general purpose solution is provided by the SPHSetupProjectContext API defined in sphcontext.h.

Utility objects like Context, Index, and StringBTree can be used to create directories or index large arrays of data structures for search. The Context is a combination of a StringBTree and a Index. It allows any object (address) to have a symbolic name (or names). It also provides the reverse mapping, from address to name(s).

## Shared Address Space Runtime

- sassim.h SAS base Runtime
- saslock.h SAS Shared Address Locks
- sasatom.h SAS Atomic operation
- sasmsync.h SAS Memory Advice API

## General Utility Objects

- sassimplespace.h SAS Simple Space
- sassimplestack.h SAS Simple Stack
- sassimpleheap.h SAS Simple Heap
- sascompoundheap.h SAS Compound Heap; expanding heap of Simple Heaps
- sphcompoundpcqheap.h SAS Compound Heap extension; expanding heap of PCQueues

## Maps, indexes and Contexts

- sphcontext.h SPH Context
- sasstringbtree.h SAS String BTree
- sasstringbtreeenum.h String BTree Enum for accessing Contexts and String BTrees
- sasindex.h Binary Index BTree
- sasindexenum.h Binary BTree Index Enum for accessing Index BTrees

Note
  These (Context, Index, and StringBTree) utility objects are implemented on (as a subclass of) the SASCompoundHeap_t utility object. A SASCompoundHeap_t is a heap of SASSimpleHeap_t heaps. The Btree nodes are SASSimpleHeap_t, which are normally page size allocations. This framework implicitly manages locality of reference, minimizing the number of pages/cache-lines touched during any specific search.

## Shared Persistent Heap, Multi-core Optimized Utilities

- sphlockfreeheap.h Lock Free Heap
- sphlflogger.h Lock Free Logger
- sphlogportal.h Lock Free Portal/Multiplexer for Loggers
- sphlflogentry.h Logger Entry access API
- sphdirectpcqueue.h Lock Free Direct Single Producer / Single Consumer Queue
- sphsinglepcqueue.h Lock Free Single Producer / Single Consumer Queue
- sphlfentry.h SPH Entry access API

## MultiCore Utility functions

- sphtimer.h APIs to access the high resolution timer and timer frequency
- sphthread.h APIs to identify processes and threads