modernuo/Projects/Server/EventLoopTasks.cs
Kamron Batman 6d846b11e5
perf: Sleep the event loop when idle. Fixes networking micro-stalls. Adds event loop instrumentation. (#2559)
## Problem

`RunEventLoop` span through its body regardless of whether there was anything to do — ~10% of a desktop core for an empty shard, and ~70% of a core on a 3 vCPU VPS. A process that never idles is exactly what burstable vCPU plans throttle, which is how this surfaced: lag spikes that went away when the operator bought more cores. The spin also denied the GC its natural pause points, so memory climbed until a world save forced a collection — alarming in task manager, harmless in practice, and a recurring source of "is my server leaking?" reports.

## Result

Windows desktop, real world of **190,728 items / 33,158 mobiles**, no players, saves and prebake off, three consecutive runs:

| | Legacy spin | Idle sleeping |
|---|---|---|
| **CPU** | 10.42 – 10.50% of one core | **0.78 – 1.00%** |
| **Tick lag** (peak/15s) | 4–10 ms | 5–11 ms |

**~10× less CPU with tick lag unchanged** — the CPU came free rather than being traded for latency. Slower hosts gain proportionally more. Spin mode (`server.eventLoopIdleWaitMs=0`) independently gained **7× the iterations per core** (1.19M → 8.3M cycles/sec) from the ring's AcceptEx rework.

## How

The loop blocks in `NetState.WaitForCompletion` whenever every queue it drains is empty (all the drains are bounded, so leftovers keep it awake). Receive completions, new connections, and cross-thread `LoopContext.Post` (via the ring's sticky `Wake()`) are all in the wait set, so sleeping adds no latency to any of them. Only timer-driven logic sees wheel lag, bounded by the idle wait.

**Health is measured at the only place sleeping can cause harm.** A sleep is bounded by the time to the next wheel turn, so a correctly honoured sleep can never miss a deadline — the only failure mode is the host returning the wait late. That overshoot is measured on every sleep (one extra timestamp read; production's entire accounting cost), and an escalating backoff suspends sleeping when it persists. By construction, server work — saves, heavy staff commands, deep timer callbacks — cannot trip it, so the warning means exactly one thing: *the host is not scheduling the process promptly*, with two known remedies (dedicated CPU, or `=0`). Hosts with no high-resolution wait mechanism at all are detected once at startup and spin instead.

**CPS is removed.** `Core.CyclesPerSecond`/`AverageCPS` measured nothing actionable before and became actively misleading once the loop sleeps (the rate is set by the sleep, not by shard health). The admin gump's Performance page now shows the verdict instead: `Healthy` / `Sleep suspended (host)` / `Spinning (configured)`.

## Configuration

| Setting | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `server.eventLoopIdleWaitMs` | `2` | Longest idle block. Measured across 1/2/4/8 ms, 2 is where the trade stops being free. `0` = never sleep: ~98% of a core, zero scheduling overhead — for large shards on dedicated CPU. |
| `server.lateWakeThreshold` | `1` | Idle waits the host may return a full tick late, per second, before sleeping backs off. Raise for jittery hosts; very high disables the backoff. |

## Diagnostics (compiled out by default)

`dotnet build -p:EventLoopProfiling=true` compiles in `EventLoopProfiler` — every hook is `[Conditional("EVENT_LOOP_PROFILING")]`, so normal builds contain zero profiling IL. The profiling build decomposes each second of wall time into **work (per loop phase) / sleep / GC pause / stolen residual**, keeps ~15 minutes of history in a ring buffer, and the `[LoopStats` command prints the last minute and dumps the full history to CSV. `dev-docs/debugging-event-loop.md` is the diagnosis guide (for humans and AI): what production already tells you, when to flip the profiling build, the signature table for host-steal vs deep-processing vs GC vs wake bugs, why dotnet-trace comes last, and the GC/RAM "leak" misconception.

## Verification

- 815 Server.Tests green; both build configurations compile.
- Docker echo harness green on epoll and io_uring (ping-pong mode); kqueue verified manually on an M1 Max.
- A/B measurements and per-change numbers: `measure/event-loop` branch.

## Notes

The full measurement harness and vendored ring sources used to develop this live on the [`measure/event-loop`](https://github.com/modernuo/ModernUO/tree/measure/event-loop) branch, kept for future loop work.
2026-08-09 13:24:59 -07:00

135 lines
4.1 KiB
C#

/*************************************************************************
* ModernUO *
* Copyright 2019-2026 - ModernUO Development Team *
* Email: hi@modernuo.com *
* File: EventLoopTasks.cs *
* *
* 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. *
* *
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License *
* along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. *
*************************************************************************/
using System;
using System.Collections.Concurrent;
using System.Threading;
namespace Server;
public sealed class EventLoopContext : SynchronizationContext
{
public enum Priority
{
Normal,
High
}
private readonly ConcurrentQueue<Action> _queue;
private readonly ConcurrentQueue<Action> _priorityQueue;
private readonly Thread _mainThread;
private readonly int _maxPerFrame;
public EventLoopContext(int maxPerFrame = 128)
{
_maxPerFrame = maxPerFrame;
_queue = [];
_priorityQueue = [];
_mainThread = Thread.CurrentThread;
}
public override SynchronizationContext CreateCopy() => new EventLoopContext();
/// <summary>
/// True when no callbacks are waiting to run.
/// </summary>
/// <remarks>
/// <see cref="ExecuteTasks"/> drains at most <c>_maxPerFrame</c> callbacks, so work can
/// legitimately be left over. The event loop checks this before sleeping so a backlog keeps
/// it running instead.
/// </remarks>
public bool IsEmpty => _queue.IsEmpty && _priorityQueue.IsEmpty;
public void Post(Action d, Priority priority = Priority.Normal)
{
(priority == Priority.High ? _priorityQueue : _queue).Enqueue(d);
WakeEventLoop();
}
public override void Post(SendOrPostCallback d, object state)
{
_queue.Enqueue(() => d(state));
WakeEventLoop();
}
/// <summary>
/// Nudges the game loop in case it is asleep: the loop blocks on network I/O, which a queue
/// push alone does not signal.
/// </summary>
private void WakeEventLoop()
{
// A post from the loop thread cannot need a wake -- the loop is executing this very call
// -- and the signal is a syscall on every backend.
if (Thread.CurrentThread == _mainThread)
{
EventLoopProfiler.WakeSignal(elided: true);
return;
}
EventLoopProfiler.WakeSignal(elided: false);
// Safe before networking is configured and after teardown; NetState.Wake does nothing.
Network.NetState.Wake();
}
public override void Send(SendOrPostCallback d, object state)
{
if (Thread.CurrentThread == _mainThread)
{
d(state);
return;
}
var evt = new AutoResetEvent(false);
_queue.Enqueue(() =>
{
d(state);
evt.Set();
});
WakeEventLoop();
evt.WaitOne();
}
public void ExecuteTasks()
{
if (Thread.CurrentThread != _mainThread)
{
throw new Exception("Called EventLoop.ExecuteTasks on incorrect thread!");
}
var count = _priorityQueue.Count;
for (var i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
if (_priorityQueue.TryDequeue(out var a))
{
a();
}
}
count = Math.Min(_queue.Count, _maxPerFrame);
for (var i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
if (_queue.TryDequeue(out var a))
{
a();
}
}
}
}