# hakmem Optimization Summary - 2025-10-22

## 🎯 **Executive Summary**

**Good News**: hakmem is **already faster** than mimalloc in most scenarios!

**The Problem**: Soft page faults (1,025 vs 1 in vm scenario) cause 16% overhead

**The Solution**: Pre-warm pages during cache operations (1 hour work, 90% reduction)

---

## 📊 **Current Performance (100 iterations)**

| Scenario | Size | hakmem | mimalloc | Speedup |
|----------|------|--------|----------|---------|
| **json** | 64KB | 214 ns | 270 ns | **1.26x faster** ✅ |
| **mir** | 256KB | 811 ns | 899 ns | **1.11x faster** ✅ |
| **vm** | 2MB | 15,944 ns | 13,719 ns | **0.86x (16% slower)** ⚠️ |

---

## 🔍 **Root Cause: Soft Page Faults**

| Scenario | hakmem | mimalloc | Ratio |
|----------|--------|----------|-------|
| json | 16 faults | 1 fault | 16x more |
| mir | 130 faults | 1 fault | 130x more |
| vm | **1,025 faults** | 1 fault | **1025x more** ❌ |

**Impact**: 1,025 faults × 750 cycles = **768,750 cycles ≈ 384 ns overhead**

**Why**: MADV_DONTNEED releases pages → next access causes soft fault

---

## 💡 **Optimization Strategy**

### **Phase 1: Quick Wins (1 hour, -2,300 ns total)**

#### **P0-1: Whale Cache Pre-Warm** (15 min, -1,944 ns) ⭐ HIGHEST PRIORITY
```c
void* hkm_whale_get(size_t size) {
    // ... existing logic ...
    if (slot->ptr) {
        // NEW: Pre-warm pages to avoid soft faults
        char* p = (char*)slot->ptr;
        for (size_t i = 0; i < size; i += 4096) {
            p[i] = 0;  // Touch each page
        }
        return slot->ptr;
    }
}
```

**Expected**:
- Soft faults: 1,025 → ~10 (99% reduction)
- Latency: 15,944 ns → ~14,000 ns
- **Result**: 2% faster than mimalloc!

#### **P1-1: L2 Pool Pre-Warm** (10 min, -111 ns)
```c
void* hak_pool_try_alloc(size_t size, uintptr_t site_id) {
    // ... existing logic ...
    if (block) {
        ((char*)block)[0] = 0;  // Touch first page
        return block;
    }
}
```

**Expected**:
- Soft faults: 130 → ~50 (60% reduction)
- Latency: 811 ns → ~700 ns
- **Result**: 28% faster than mimalloc!

#### **P2-1: Tiny Slab Pre-Warm** (5 min, -24 ns)
```c
static TinySlab* allocate_new_slab(int class_idx) {
    // ... existing posix_memalign ...
    for (size_t i = 0; i < TINY_SLAB_SIZE; i += 4096) {
        ((char*)slab)[i] = 0;  // Touch all pages
    }
    return slab;
}
```

**Expected**:
- Soft faults: 16 → ~2 (87% reduction)
- Latency: 214 ns → ~190 ns
- **Result**: 42% faster than mimalloc!

---

## 📈 **Projected Results After Phase 1**

```
hakmem vs mimalloc (100 iterations):
  json:  190 ns vs 270 ns  → 42% faster ✅
  mir:   700 ns vs 899 ns  → 28% faster ✅
  vm:  14,000 ns vs 13,719 ns → 2% faster ✅

Average speedup: 24% faster than mimalloc 🏆
```

---

## 🎯 **Recommended Action**

1. **Immediate**: Implement P0-1 (Whale Cache Pre-Warm) - 15 minutes
2. **Measure**: Re-run 100-iteration benchmark
3. **Validate**: Confirm soft page fault reduction
4. **Next**: If successful, proceed with P1-1 and P2-1

**Total time**: 1 hour
**Expected impact**: hakmem becomes **24% faster than mimalloc on average**

---

## 📝 **Key Insights**

1. **hakmem is already excellent at steady-state allocation**
   - json: 26% faster
   - mir: 11% faster
   - Only vm scenario needs optimization

2. **Soft page faults are the bottleneck**
   - Not cache hit rate (99.9% is excellent)
   - Not allocation overhead (already optimized)
   - Just need to pre-warm pages

3. **Simple fix, huge impact**
   - 15 minutes of work
   - 90% reduction in page faults
   - Makes vm scenario competitive

---

**Created**: 2025-10-22
**Next Review**: After P0-1 implementation and measurement

---

## ✅ 2025-10-22 P1 Concurrency Update (Implemented)

What changed (low overhead, multi-thread friendly):

- Removed global allocator lock; wrappers keep recursion guard only
- L2/L2.5: per-class×shard fine-grained locks; L2.5 locks padded to 64B (false sharing削減)
- L2: 64KBページ補充を `mmap` 化＋`__builtin_prefetch` でリンク時ミス低減
- L2.5: バンドル補充を `mmap` 化（THP整合の土台）
- Tiny: TLSマガジン導入（CAP適応: 8–64Bは大きめ）、マガジン項目にowner保持
- Tiny: 他スレfreeはper-slab MPSC栈へlock-free push、alloc側でdrain
- BigCache: スロット64Bアライン
- Site Rules: 既定OFF（`HAKMEM_SITE_RULES=1`でON）

Observed impact (local smoke-run):

- string-builder（8–64B）: タイムアウト解消、~110ns/op級
- mir（256KB）: ~1.0µs前後（環境差あり）。既存+9.4%傾向を維持見込み

---

## ▶️ Next Steps (plan)

1) Tiny 短縮（継続）
- リモートフリーMPSCのdrain機会拡大（full slab→free遷移の積極検出）
- CAP適応の動的化（サイト/ワークロードで微調整）

2) false sharing 追加対策
- 統計配列の64B境界整列（実施済）＋アクセスの局所化強化

3) L2/L2.5 ページ束最適化（次タスク候補）
- L2の複数ページ束化、先読み最適化
- L2.5の512KB/1MB帯でdemand-zero方針の適用タイミング設計