faster-fifo

Faster alternative to Python's standard multiprocessing.Queue (IPC FIFO queue). Up to 30x faster in some configurations.

Implemented in C++ using POSIX mutexes with PTHREAD_PROCESS_SHARED attribute. Based on a circular buffer, low footprint, brokerless. Completely mimics the interface of the standard multiprocessing.Queue, so can be used as a drop-in replacement.

Adds get_many() and put_many() methods to receive/send multiple messages at once for the price of a single lock.

Requirements

Linux or MacOS
Python 3.6 or newer
GCC 4.9.0 or newer

Installation

pip install faster-fifo

(on a fresh Linux installation you might need some basic compiling tools sudo apt install --reinstall build-essential gcc g++)

Manual build instructions

pip install Cython
python setup.py build_ext --inplace
pip install -e .

Usage example

from faster_fifo import Queue
from queue import Full, Empty

q = Queue(1000 * 1000)  # specify the size of the circular buffer in the ctor

# any pickle-able Python object can be added to the queue
py_obj = dict(a=42, b=33, c=(1, 2, 3), d=[1, 2, 3], e='123', f=b'kkk')
q.put(py_obj)
assert q.qsize() == 1

retrieved = q.get()
assert q.empty()
assert py_obj == retrieved

for i in range(100):
    try:
        q.put(py_obj, timeout=0.1)
    except Full:
        log.debug('Queue is full!')

num_received = 0
while num_received < 100:
    # get multiple messages at once, returns a list of messages for better performance in many-to-few scenarios
    # get_many does not guarantee that all max_messages_to_get will be received on the first call, in fact
    # no such guarantee can be made in multiprocessing systems.
    # get_many() will retrieve as many messages as there are available AND can fit in the pre-allocated memory
    # buffer. The size of the buffer is increased gradually to match demand.
    messages = q.get_many(max_messages_to_get=100)
    num_received += len(messages)

try:
    q.get(timeout=0.1)
    assert True, 'This won\'t be called'
except Empty:
    log.debug('Queue is empty')

Performance comparison (faster-fifo vs multiprocessing.Queue)

System #1 (Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-7900X CPU @ 3.30GHz, 10 cores, Ubuntu 18.04)

(measured execution times in seconds)

	multiprocessing.Queue	faster-fifo, get()	faster-fifo, get_many()
1 producer 1 consumer (200K msgs per producer)	2.54	0.86	0.92
1 producer 10 consumers (200K msgs per producer)	4.00	1.39	1.36
10 producers 1 consumer (100K msgs per producer)	13.19	6.74	0.94
3 producers 20 consumers (100K msgs per producer)	9.30	2.22	2.17
20 producers 3 consumers (50K msgs per producer)	18.62	7.41	0.64
20 producers 20 consumers (50K msgs per producer)	36.51	1.32	3.79

System #2 (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz, 2 cores, Ubuntu 18.04)

(measured execution times in seconds)

	multiprocessing.Queue	faster-fifo, get()	faster-fifo, get_many()
1 producer 1 consumer (200K msgs per producer)	7.86	2.09	2.2
1 producer 10 consumers (200K msgs per producer)	11.68	4.01	3.88
10 producers 1 consumer (100K msgs per producer)	44.48	16.68	5.98
3 producers 20 consumers (100K msgs per producer)	22.59	7.83	7.49
20 producers 3 consumers (50K msgs per producer)	66.3	22.3	6.35
20 producers 20 consumers (50K msgs per producer)	78.75	14.39	15.78

Added method data_size() to query the total size of the messages in queue (in bytes). Thank you @LucaNicosia!

v1.4.4

Fixed an obscure issue with the TLSBuffer ctor being called without arguments (guessing it's Cython's weirdness)

v1.4.3

Simplified usage with "spawn" multiprocessing context. No need to use faster_fifo_reduction anymore. Thank you @MosBas!

v1.4.2

Fixed an issue with the custom Queue pickler

v1.4.1

Fixed multithreading issues using threading.local for message recv buffer (huge thanks to @brianmacy!)
Better error reporting in Cython and C++
Added threading tests

v1.4.0

Increase default receive buffer size from 10 bytes to 5000 bytes.

v1.3.1

Minor change: better debugging messages + improved C++ tests

v1.3.0

Now support custom serializers and deserializers instead of Pickle (thank you @beasteers!):

q = Queue(max_size_bytes=100000, loads=custom_deserializer, dumps=custom_serializer)

Footnote

Originally designed for SampleFactory, a high-throughput asynchronous RL codebase https://github.com/alex-petrenko/sample-factory.

Programmed by Aleksei Petrenko and Tushar Kumar at USC RESL.

Developed under MIT License, feel free to use for any purpose, commercial or not, at your own risk.

If you wish to cite this repository:

@misc{faster-fifo,
    author={Petrenko, Aleksei and Kumar, Tushar},
    title={A Faster Alternative to Python's multiprocessing.Queue},
    publisher={GitHub},
    journal = {GitHub repository},
    howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/alex-petrenko/faster-fifo}},
    year={2020},
}

alex-petrenko/faster-fifo

alex-petrenko

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