Previously, PathDB used a single buffer to aggregate database writes,
which needed to be flushed atomically. However, flushing large amounts
of data (e.g., 256MB) caused significant overhead, often blocking the
system for around 3 seconds during the flush.
To mitigate this overhead and reduce performance spikes, a double-buffer
mechanism is introduced. When the active buffer fills up, it is marked
as frozen and a background flushing process is triggered. Meanwhile, a
new buffer is allocated for incoming writes, allowing operations to
continue uninterrupted.
This approach reduces system blocking times and provides flexibility in
adjusting buffer parameters for improved performance.
In this pull request, snapshot generation in pathdb has been ported from
the legacy state snapshot implementation. Additionally, when running in
path mode, legacy state snapshot data is now managed by the pathdb
based snapshot logic.
Note: Existing snapshot data will be re-generated, regardless of whether
it was previously fully constructed.
In this pull request, the state iterator is implemented. It's mostly a copy-paste
from the original state snapshot package, but still has some important changes
to highlight here:
(a) The iterator for the disk layer consists of a diff iterator and a disk iterator.
Originally, the disk layer in the state snapshot was a wrapper around the disk,
and its corresponding iterator was also a wrapper around the disk iterator.
However, due to structural differences, the disk layer iterator is divided into
two parts:
- The disk iterator, which traverses the content stored on disk.
- The diff iterator, which traverses the aggregated state buffer.
Checkout `BinaryIterator` and `FastIterator` for more details.
(b) The staleness management is improved in the diffAccountIterator and
diffStorageIterator
Originally, in the `diffAccountIterator`, the layer’s staleness had to be checked
within the Next function to ensure the iterator remained usable. Additionally,
a read lock on the associated diff layer was required to first retrieve the account
blob. This read lock protection is essential to prevent concurrent map read/write.
Afterward, a staleness check was performed to ensure the retrieved data was
not outdated.
The entire logic can be simplified as follows: a loadAccount callback is provided
to retrieve account data. If the corresponding state is immutable (e.g., diff layers
in the path database), the staleness check can be skipped, and a single account
data retrieval is sufficient. However, if the corresponding state is mutable (e.g.,
the disk layer in the path database), the callback can operate as follows:
```go
func(hash common.Hash) ([]byte, error) {
dl.lock.RLock()
defer dl.lock.RUnlock()
if dl.stale {
return nil, errSnapshotStale
}
return dl.buffer.states.mustAccount(hash)
}
```
The callback solution can eliminate the complexity for managing
concurrency with the read lock for atomic operation.
