- /* Include file cached obstack implementation.
- Written by Fred Fish <fnf@cygnus.com>
- Rewritten by Jim Blandy <jimb@cygnus.com>
- Copyright (C) 1999-2015 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 */