measuring concurent loop times in erlang - concurrency

I create a round of processes in erlang and wish to measure the time that it took for the first message to pass throigh the network and the entire message series, each time the first node gets the message back it sends another one.
right now in the first node i have the following code:
receive
stop->
io:format("all processes stopped!~n"),
true;
start->
statistics(runtime),
Son!{number, 1},
msg(PID, Son, M, 1);
{_, M} ->
{Time1, _} = statistics(runtime),
io:format("The last message has arrived after ~p! ~n",[Time1*1000]),
Son!stop;
of course i start the statistics when sending the first message.
as you can see i use the Time_Since_Last_Call for the first message loop and wish to use the Total_Run_Time for the entire run, the problem is that Total_Run_Time is accumulative since i start the statistics for the first time.
The second thought i had in mind is using another process with 2 receive loops getting the times for each one adding them and printing but i'm sure that erlang can do better than this.
i guess the best method to solve this is somehow flush the Total_Run_Time, but i couldn't find how this could be done. any ideas how this can be tackled?

One way to measure round-trip times would be to send a timestamp along with each message. When the first node receives the message, it can then measure the round-trip time, calculating Total_Run_Time - Timestamp.
To calculate the total run time, I would memorize the first timestamp in the process state (or dictionary), and calculate the total run time when stopping the test.
Besides, given that you mention the network, are you sure that the CPU time (which is what statistics(runtime) calculates is what you're after? Perhaps, wall clock time would be more appropriate.

Related

How to limit an Akka Stream to execute and send down one message only once per second?

I have an Akka Stream and I want the stream to send messages down stream approximately every second.
I tried two ways to solve this problem, the first way was to make the producer at the start of the stream only send messages once every second when a Continue messages comes into this actor.
// When receive a Continue message in a ActorPublisher
// do work then...
if (totalDemand > 0) {
import scala.concurrent.duration._
context.system.scheduler.scheduleOnce(1 second, self, Continue)
}
This works for a short while then a flood of Continue messages appear in the ActorPublisher actor, I assume (guess but not sure) from downstream via back-pressure requesting messages as the downstream can consume fast but the upstream is not producing at a fast rate. So this method failed.
The other way I tried was via backpressure control, I used a MaxInFlightRequestStrategy on the ActorSubscriber at the end of the stream to limit the number of messages to 1 per second. This works but messages coming in come in at approximately three or so at a time, not just one at a time. It seems the backpressure control doesn't immediately change the rate of messages coming in OR messages were already queued in the stream and waiting to be processed.
So the problem is, how can I have an Akka Stream which can process one message only per second?
I discovered that MaxInFlightRequestStrategy is a valid way to do it but I should set the batch size to 1, its batch size is default 5, which was causing the problem I found. Also its an over-complicated way to solve the problem now that I am looking at the submitted answer here.
You can either put your elements through the throttling flow, which will back pressure a fast source, or you can use combination of tick and zip.
The first solution would be like this:
val veryFastSource =
Source.fromIterator(() => Iterator.continually(Random.nextLong() % 10000))
val throttlingFlow = Flow[Long].throttle(
// how many elements do you allow
elements = 1,
// in what unit of time
per = 1.second,
maximumBurst = 0,
// you can also set this to Enforcing, but then your
// stream will collapse if exceeding the number of elements / s
mode = ThrottleMode.Shaping
)
veryFastSource.via(throttlingFlow).runWith(Sink.foreach(println))
The second solution would be like this:
val veryFastSource =
Source.fromIterator(() => Iterator.continually(Random.nextLong() % 10000))
val tickingSource = Source.tick(1.second, 1.second, 0)
veryFastSource.zip(tickingSource).map(_._1).runWith(Sink.foreach(println))

Scheduling reset every 24 hours at midnight

I have a counter "numberOrders" and i want to reset it everyday at midnight, to know how many orders I get in one day, what I have right now is this:
val system = akka.actor.ActorSystem("system")
system.scheduler.schedule(86400000 milliseconds, 0 milliseconds){(numberOrders = 0)}
This piece of code is inside a def which is called every time i get a new order, so want it does is: reset numberOrders after 24hours from the first order or from every order, I'm not really sure if every time there's a new order is going to reset after 24 hours, which is not what I want. I want to rest the variable everyday at midnight, any idea? Thanks!
To further increase pushy's answer. Since you might not always be sure when the site started and if you want to be exactly sure it runs at midnight you can do the following
val system = akka.actor.ActorSystem("system")
val wait = (24 hours).toMillis - System.currentTimeMillis
system.scheduler.schedule(Duration.apply(wait, MILLISECONDS), 24 hours, orderActor, ResetCounterMessage)
Might not be the tidiest of solutions but it does the job.
As schedule supports repeated executions, you could just set the interval parameter to 24 hours, the initial delay to the amount of time between now and midnight, and initiate the code at startup. You seem to be creating a new actorSystem every time you get an order right now, that does not seem quite right, and you would be rid of that as well.
Also I would suggest using the schedule method which sends messages to actors instead. This way the actor that processes the order could keep count, and if it receives a ResetCounter message it would simply reset the counter. You could simply write:
system.scheduler.schedule(x seconds, 24 hours, orderActor, ResetCounterMessage)
when you start up your actor system initially, and be done with it.

How can I periodically execute some function if this function takes along time to run (less than peroid)

I want to run a function for example func() exactly 1 time per second. However the running time of func() is about 500 ms. How Can I do that? I know if the running time of the function is low, I can write a while loop in func() and sleep() for 1 second after each execution. But now, the running time is high. What should I do to ensure the func() run exactly 1 time per second? Thanks.
Yo do:
Take the current time in start_time.
Perform your job
Take the current time in end_time
Wait for (1 second + start_time - end_time)
That way, you can perform your tasks every seconds reliably. If the task takes less time, you will wait longer and vice versa. Note however that this assumes that your task takes always less than 1 sec. to execute. In the real code, you want to check for that before the sleep statement.
Implementation details depend on the platform.
Note that using this method still results in a small drift due to the time it takes to compute step 4. A more accurate alternative would be to synchronize on integer multiple of one second. That way, over 1000s of cycles you would not drift.
It depends on the level of accuracy you need.
If you want a brute, easy to code solution, you can get the time before first run of the function and save it in some variable (start_time). Create repeat index count variable (repeat_number) that stores next repeat number. Then you can do kinda this:
1) next_run_time = ++repeat_number*1sec + start_time;
2) func();
3) wait_time = next_run_time - current_time;
4) sleep(wait_time)
5) goto 1;
This approach disables accumulation of time error on each iteration.
But for the real application you should find some event framework or library.

Limit iterations per time unit

Is there a way to limit iterations per time unit? For example, I have a loop like this:
for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)
{
// do stuff
}
I want to limit the loop above so there will be maximum of 30 iterations per second.
I would also like the iterations to be evenly positioned in the timeline so not something like 30 iterations in first 0.4s and then wait 0.6s.
Is that possible? It does not have to be completely precise (though the more precise it will be the better).
#FredOverflow My program is running
very fast. It is sending data over
wifi to another program which is not
fast enough to handle them at the
current rate. – Richard Knop
Then you should probably have the program you're sending data to send an acknowledgment when it's finished receiving the last chunk of data you sent then send the next chunk. Anything else will just cause you frustrations down the line as circumstances change.
Suppose you have a good Now() function (GetTickCount() is bad example, it's OS specific and has bad precision):
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++){
DWORD have_to_sleep_until = GetTickCount() + EXPECTED_ITERATION_TIME_MS;
// do stuff
Sleep(max(0, have_to_sleep_until - GetTickCount()));
};
You can check elapsed time inside the loop, but it may be not an usual solution. Because computation time is totally up to the performance of the machine and algorithm, people optimize it during their development time(ex. many game programmer requires at least 25-30 frames per second for properly smooth animation).
easiest way (for windows) is to use QueryPerformanceCounter(). Some pseudo-code below.
QueryPerformanceFrequency(&freq)
timeWanted = 1.0/30.0 //time per iteration if 30 iterations / sec
for i
QueryPerf(count1)
do stuff
queryPerf(count2)
timeElapsed = (double)(c2 - c1) * (double)(1e3) / double(freq) //time in milliseconds
timeDiff = timeWanted - timeElapsed
if (timeDiff > 0)
QueryPerf(c3)
QueryPerf(c4)
while ((double)(c4 - c3) * (double)(1e3) / double(freq) < timeDiff)
queryPerf(c4)
end for
EDIT: You must make sure that the 'do stuff' area takes less time than your framerate or else it doesn't matter. Also instead of 1e3 for milliseconds, you can go all the way to nanoseconds if you do 1e9 (if you want that much accuracy)
WARNING... this will eat your CPU but give you good 'software' timing... Do it in a separate thread (and only if you have more than 1 processor) so that any guis wont lock. You can put a conditional in there to stop the loop if this is a multi-threaded app too.
#FredOverflow My program is running very fast. It is sending data over wifi to another program which is not fast enough to handle them at the current rate. – Richard Knop
What you might need a buffer or queue at the receiver side. The thread that receives the messages from the client (like through a socket) get the message and put it in the queue. The actual consumer of the messages reads/pops from the queue. Of course you need concurrency control for your queue.
Besides the flow control methods mentioned, if you also have the need to maintain an accurate specific data sending rate in your sender part. Usually it can be done like this.
E.x. if you want to send at 10Mbps, create a timer of interval 1ms so it will call a predefined function every 1ms. Then in the timer handler function, by keep tracking of 2 static variables 1)Time elapsed since beginning of sending data 2)How much data in bytes have been sent up to last call, you can easily calculate how much data is needed to be sent in the current call (or just sleep and wait for next call).
By this way, you can do "streaming" of data in a very stable way with very little jitterness, and this is usually adopted in streaming of videos. Of course it also depends on how accurate the timer is.

Need explanation for this boost::asio timer example

There is a line in the 3rd tutorial on Boost asio that shows how to renew a timer and yet prevent there from being drift. The line is the following:
t->expires_at(t->expires_at() + boost::posix_time::seconds(1));
Maybe it's me but I wasn't able to find documentation on the 2nd usage of expires_at(), with no parameters. expires_at(x) sets the new expiration, cancelling any pending completion handlers. So presumably expires_at() does what, return time of the last expiry? So by adding one second, if there should be some number of ms, say n ms, then it will in essence be "subtracted" from the next expiry since the time is being accounted for? What happens then if the time it takes to perform this handler is greater than 1 second in this example? Does it fire immediately?
expires_at() return the time when it is set to timeout. So this will move the timeout to 1 second later.
When you set the time with expires_at(x) you will get a return of 0 if it already invoked due to time already passed. If return is bigger then 0 it indicates number of cancels that were made.