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perf: deliver the first subscription update without TCP batching delay - #200

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Oct 3, 2026
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@jsam jsam commented Oct 3, 2026

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Draft for visibility. Stacked on the release checkpoint 1 branch (fm/il-rc1); it will be retargeted to main once checkpoint 1 lands, and validated through the no-mistakes pipeline before merge.

Tracker: #199

jsam added 2 commits October 3, 2026 20:36
Each of 40 fresh agents subscribes and the writer inserts a probe at
once, then another after the agent has been quiet for 100 ms. The gate
requires first_delta_us.p50 and warm_delta_us.p50 (40 samples a round:
p50 only), so a first delta that pays more than a warm one is a
regression.

On fm/il-rc1 the fixture shows the GenBI benchmark's bimodal latency:
first delta p50 40.4 ms, warm 4.3 ms. Idling 100 ms before the first
write makes it warm too (4.6 ms), and the server-side refresh is the
same for both (p50 2.2 ms vs 2.4 ms): a transport stall, not cold
evaluation.
The first subscription delta after .subscribe answered stalled ~40 ms:
Nagle's algorithm held the push until the agent's delayed ACK of the
subscribe reply fired. The server-side refresh was never cold (first
2.2 ms vs later 2.4 ms p50), so nothing needs pre-warming.

Every response and WebSocket frame is a whole message a client waits
for, so the server disables Nagle on every accepted socket.

delta_first: first delta p50 40.4 -> 4.0 ms (warm 4.4 ms).
GenBI priority x3, ack->delta: first write p50 37.7 -> 5.2 ms, later
writes 6.2 -> 5.8 ms; delta path PASS on both.
@jsam
jsam changed the base branch from fm/il-rc1 to main October 3, 2026 20:36
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jsam marked this pull request as ready for review October 3, 2026 20:36
@jsam
jsam merged commit 2f621c5 into main Oct 3, 2026
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@jsam
jsam deleted the fm/il-pw1 branch October 3, 2026 20:48
jsam added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 3, 2026
Brings #216 (online checkpoint export) and #200 (TCP_NODELAY on accepted
connections). .backup claims a destination and starts an export, so
MetaCommand::changes_durable_state counts it as durable (not interrupted
once started); .backup status is read-only.
jsam added a commit that referenced this pull request Oct 4, 2026
…ry request (#249)

The release-checkpoint performance gate fails on main: cheap_query serial
p50 is 1.110x the approved baseline e732cd5 on the 32-vCPU runner
(115 -> 126 us). Concurrent latency and throughput did not move. Bisected
to #214 (per-connection request pipelining), made worse by #222.

Cause: the pipeline runs requests in a `FuturesUnordered`. Its `poll_next`
wakes its own task and returns `Pending` after any poll that polled every
future in the set. With one request in flight, which is every serial
client, that happens on each request's first poll. The connection task
wakes itself, tokio schedules that as a yield, and a yield wakes an idle
worker to take the task. Each request therefore costs one more context
switch (4.0 -> 5.0 per query) and a hand-off of the connection task to
another core. #222 added no work per query but made the hand-off dearer:
user cycles per query rose 15% at the same instruction count.

Fix: keep one never-woken future in the set. After the pipeline's first
poll it is never polled again, so no poll reaches every future and the
forced yield no longer fires. The yield after futures that wake
themselves still applies. Pipelining, ordering, deadlines, cancellation
and the credential fence are unchanged. Nothing is added per request: no
lock, atomic or allocation. Each connection gets one more set node.

Bisect (cheap_query, `?edge(1, Y)`, serial). Server counters per query
from perf stat. Ratios are against e732cd5, from an interleaved probe
with one pinned server per commit, 40 rounds:

| commit | PR | user instr/query | ctx switches/query | p50 ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| e732cd5 | baseline | 1.282M | 4.0 | 1.000 |
| d75ce6e | #208 atomic programs | 1.279M | 4.0 | 0.993 |
| 4578fe6 | #215 notification stream | 1.271M | 4.0 | 0.991 |
| 71a4d24 | #216 online backup | 1.275M | 4.0 | 1.016 |
| 2f621c5 | #200 first-update latency | 1.272M | 4.0 | 1.009 |
| e96df5c | #207 | 1.279M | 4.0 | 0.998 |
| 4dd8fe9 | #209 shard index | 1.272M | 4.0 | 0.987 |
| 277c7f0 | #206 | 1.274M | 4.0 | 1.008 |
| 3554c98 | #214 pipelining, deadlines | 1.296M | 5.0 | 1.020 |
| 3492a59 | #213 | 1.294M | 5.0 | 1.030 |
| 2ba9a5a | #212 provenance | 1.297M | 5.0 | 1.029 |
| 9ed61b4 | #204 key expiry | 1.297M | 5.0 | 1.027 |
| be35ee3 | #221 | 1.297M | 5.0 | 1.013 |
| c98a590 | #222 bounded streaming | 1.298M | 5.0 | 1.047 |
| a6fd628 | #219 wildcard fix | 1.297M | 5.0 | 1.061 |
| b7f7ad6 | #220 WAL durability | 1.300M | 5.0 | 1.056 |
| de54807 | #223 shared standing eval | 1.299M | 5.0 | 1.071 |
| 55ec34d | #225 checkpoint-1 fixes | 1.300M | 5.0 | 1.045 |
| 23712b8 | main | 1.300M | 5.0 | 1.064 |
| this change | | 1.300M | 4.0 | 1.033 |

Confirming A/Bs with the gate's own fixture (fresh pinned servers each
round, 40 rounds, ratio [95% interval]):

- #214 vs its parent 277c7f0: 1.039 [1.027..1.049]
- #222 vs its parent be35ee3: 1.025 [1.006..1.044]
- A/A 3554c98: 1.010 [1.002..1.025]
- e732cd5 -> main: 1.048 [1.028..1.066]
- main -> this change: 0.978 [0.958..0.989]
- e732cd5 -> this change: 1.021 [1.009..1.044], PASS (budget 1.05)

User cycles per query (perf stat, same instruction count): e732cd5 958K,
be35ee3 1053K, c98a590 1206K, this change 1006K.

Full gate, all fixtures, 20 rounds, servers pinned to CPUs 2-15:

- main -> this change: no metric worse. Every required metric is PASS, or
  INCONCLUSIVE with an interval that includes 1.0. cheap_query p50 0.979
  [0.953..1.007].
- e732cd5 -> this change: cheap_query p50 1.029 [1.019..1.072],
  INCONCLUSIVE on a busy host (load average up to 22); bound_query p50
  1.022, PASS. The insert and delta metrics improved since the baseline.

The shared host is about 4x slower per query than the CI runner, so the
same hand-off is a smaller share of each query here than there.

The remaining ~1.7% of user instructions per query since #214 is the
pipeline's own per-request bookkeeping: the boxed request future (one
4-8 KiB allocation), its set node, the request control and the in-flight
maps.
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