| /* Include file cached obstack implementation. |
| Written by Fred Fish <fnf@cygnus.com> |
| Rewritten by Jim Blandy <jimb@cygnus.com> |
| |
| Copyright (C) 1999-2000, 2002-2003, 2007-2012 Free Software |
| Foundation, Inc. |
| |
| This file is part of GDB. |
| |
| This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
| the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or |
| (at your option) any later version. |
| |
| This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the |
| GNU General Public License for more details. |
| |
| You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. */ |
| |
| #ifndef BCACHE_H |
| #define BCACHE_H 1 |
| |
| /* A bcache is a data structure for factoring out duplication in |
| read-only structures. You give the bcache some string of bytes S. |
| If the bcache already contains a copy of S, it hands you back a |
| pointer to its copy. Otherwise, it makes a fresh copy of S, and |
| hands you back a pointer to that. In either case, you can throw |
| away your copy of S, and use the bcache's. |
| |
| The "strings" in question are arbitrary strings of bytes --- they |
| can contain zero bytes. You pass in the length explicitly when you |
| call the bcache function. |
| |
| This means that you can put ordinary C objects in a bcache. |
| However, if you do this, remember that structs can contain `holes' |
| between members, added for alignment. These bytes usually contain |
| garbage. If you try to bcache two objects which are identical from |
| your code's point of view, but have different garbage values in the |
| structure's holes, then the bcache will treat them as separate |
| strings, and you won't get the nice elimination of duplicates you |
| were hoping for. So, remember to memset your structures full of |
| zeros before bcaching them! |
| |
| You shouldn't modify the strings you get from a bcache, because: |
| |
| - You don't necessarily know who you're sharing space with. If I |
| stick eight bytes of text in a bcache, and then stick an eight-byte |
| structure in the same bcache, there's no guarantee those two |
| objects don't actually comprise the same sequence of bytes. If |
| they happen to, the bcache will use a single byte string for both |
| of them. Then, modifying the structure will change the string. In |
| bizarre ways. |
| |
| - Even if you know for some other reason that all that's okay, |
| there's another problem. A bcache stores all its strings in a hash |
| table. If you modify a string's contents, you will probably change |
| its hash value. This means that the modified string is now in the |
| wrong place in the hash table, and future bcache probes will never |
| find it. So by mutating a string, you give up any chance of |
| sharing its space with future duplicates. |
| |
| |
| Size of bcache VS hashtab: |
| |
| For bcache, the most critical cost is size (or more exactly the |
| overhead added by the bcache). It turns out that the bcache is |
| remarkably efficient. |
| |
| Assuming a 32-bit system (the hash table slots are 4 bytes), |
| ignoring alignment, and limit strings to 255 bytes (1 byte length) |
| we get ... |
| |
| bcache: This uses a separate linked list to track the hash chain. |
| The numbers show roughly 100% occupancy of the hash table and an |
| average chain length of 4. Spreading the slot cost over the 4 |
| chain elements: |
| |
| 4 (slot) / 4 (chain length) + 1 (length) + 4 (chain) = 6 bytes |
| |
| hashtab: This uses a more traditional re-hash algorithm where the |
| chain is maintained within the hash table. The table occupancy is |
| kept below 75% but we'll assume its perfect: |
| |
| 4 (slot) x 4/3 (occupancy) + 1 (length) = 6 1/3 bytes |
| |
| So a perfect hashtab has just slightly larger than an average |
| bcache. |
| |
| It turns out that an average hashtab is far worse. Two things |
| hurt: |
| |
| - Hashtab's occupancy is more like 50% (it ranges between 38% and |
| 75%) giving a per slot cost of 4x2 vs 4x4/3. |
| |
| - the string structure needs to be aligned to 8 bytes which for |
| hashtab wastes 7 bytes, while for bcache wastes only 3. |
| |
| This gives: |
| |
| hashtab: 4 x 2 + 1 + 7 = 16 bytes |
| |
| bcache 4 / 4 + 1 + 4 + 3 = 9 bytes |
| |
| The numbers of GDB debugging GDB support this. ~40% vs ~70% overhead. |
| |
| |
| Speed of bcache VS hashtab (the half hash hack): |
| |
| While hashtab has a typical chain length of 1, bcache has a chain |
| length of round 4. This means that the bcache will require |
| something like double the number of compares after that initial |
| hash. In both cases the comparison takes the form: |
| |
| a.length == b.length && memcmp (a.data, b.data, a.length) == 0 |
| |
| That is lengths are checked before doing the memcmp. |
| |
| For GDB debugging GDB, it turned out that all lengths were 24 bytes |
| (no C++ so only psymbols were cached) and hence, all compares |
| required a call to memcmp. As a hack, two bytes of padding |
| (mentioned above) are used to store the upper 16 bits of the |
| string's hash value and then that is used in the comparison vis: |
| |
| a.half_hash == b.half_hash && a.length == b.length && memcmp |
| (a.data, b.data, a.length) |
| |
| The numbers from GDB debugging GDB show this to be a remarkable |
| 100% effective (only necessary length and memcmp tests being |
| performed). |
| |
| Mind you, looking at the wall clock, the same GDB debugging GDB |
| showed only marginal speed up (0.780 vs 0.773s). Seems GDB is too |
| busy doing something else :-( |
| |
| */ |
| |
| |
| struct bcache; |
| |
| /* Find a copy of the LENGTH bytes at ADDR in BCACHE. If BCACHE has |
| never seen those bytes before, add a copy of them to BCACHE. In |
| either case, return a pointer to BCACHE's copy of that string. |
| Since the cached value is ment to be read-only, return a const |
| buffer. */ |
| extern const void *bcache (const void *addr, int length, |
| struct bcache *bcache); |
| |
| /* Like bcache, but if ADDED is not NULL, set *ADDED to true if the |
| bytes were newly added to the cache, or to false if the bytes were |
| found in the cache. */ |
| extern const void *bcache_full (const void *addr, int length, |
| struct bcache *bcache, int *added); |
| |
| /* Free all the storage used by BCACHE. */ |
| extern void bcache_xfree (struct bcache *bcache); |
| |
| /* Create a new bcache object. */ |
| extern struct bcache *bcache_xmalloc ( |
| unsigned long (*hash_function)(const void *, int length), |
| int (*compare_function)(const void *, const void *, int length)); |
| |
| /* Print statistics on BCACHE's memory usage and efficacity at |
| eliminating duplication. TYPE should be a string describing the |
| kind of data BCACHE holds. Statistics are printed using |
| `printf_filtered' and its ilk. */ |
| extern void print_bcache_statistics (struct bcache *bcache, char *type); |
| extern int bcache_memory_used (struct bcache *bcache); |
| |
| /* The hash functions */ |
| extern unsigned long hash(const void *addr, int length); |
| extern unsigned long hash_continue (const void *addr, int length, |
| unsigned long h); |
| |
| #endif /* BCACHE_H */ |