Commit Graph

4 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Paul Hauner
be4e261e74 Use async code when interacting with EL (#3244)
## Overview

This rather extensive PR achieves two primary goals:

1. Uses the finalized/justified checkpoints of fork choice (FC), rather than that of the head state.
2. Refactors fork choice, block production and block processing to `async` functions.

Additionally, it achieves:

- Concurrent forkchoice updates to the EL and cache pruning after a new head is selected.
- Concurrent "block packing" (attestations, etc) and execution payload retrieval during block production.
- Concurrent per-block-processing and execution payload verification during block processing.
- The `Arc`-ification of `SignedBeaconBlock` during block processing (it's never mutated, so why not?):
    - I had to do this to deal with sending blocks into spawned tasks.
    - Previously we were cloning the beacon block at least 2 times during each block processing, these clones are either removed or turned into cheaper `Arc` clones.
    - We were also `Box`-ing and un-`Box`-ing beacon blocks as they moved throughout the networking crate. This is not a big deal, but it's nice to avoid shifting things between the stack and heap.
    - Avoids cloning *all the blocks* in *every chain segment* during sync.
    - It also has the potential to clean up our code where we need to pass an *owned* block around so we can send it back in the case of an error (I didn't do much of this, my PR is already big enough 😅)
- The `BeaconChain::HeadSafetyStatus` struct was removed. It was an old relic from prior merge specs.

For motivation for this change, see https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/pull/3244#issuecomment-1160963273

## Changes to `canonical_head` and `fork_choice`

Previously, the `BeaconChain` had two separate fields:

```
canonical_head: RwLock<Snapshot>,
fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
```

Now, we have grouped these values under a single struct:

```
canonical_head: CanonicalHead {
  cached_head: RwLock<Arc<Snapshot>>,
  fork_choice: RwLock<BeaconForkChoice>
} 
```

Apart from ergonomics, the only *actual* change here is wrapping the canonical head snapshot in an `Arc`. This means that we no longer need to hold the `cached_head` (`canonical_head`, in old terms) lock when we want to pull some values from it. This was done to avoid deadlock risks by preventing functions from acquiring (and holding) the `cached_head` and `fork_choice` locks simultaneously.

## Breaking Changes

### The `state` (root) field in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event

Consider the scenario where epoch `n` is just finalized, but `start_slot(n)` is skipped. There are two state roots we might in the `finalized_checkpoint` SSE event:

1. The state root of the finalized block, which is `get_block(finalized_checkpoint.root).state_root`.
4. The state root at slot of `start_slot(n)`, which would be the state from (1), but "skipped forward" through any skip slots.

Previously, Lighthouse would choose (2). However, we can see that when [Teku generates that event](de2b2801c8/data/beaconrestapi/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/beaconrestapi/handlers/v1/events/EventSubscriptionManager.java (L171-L182)) it uses [`getStateRootFromBlockRoot`](de2b2801c8/data/provider/src/main/java/tech/pegasys/teku/api/ChainDataProvider.java (L336-L341)) which uses (1).

I have switched Lighthouse from (2) to (1). I think it's a somewhat arbitrary choice between the two, where (1) is easier to compute and is consistent with Teku.

## Notes for Reviewers

I've renamed `BeaconChain::fork_choice` to `BeaconChain::recompute_head`. Doing this helped ensure I broke all previous uses of fork choice and I also find it more descriptive. It describes an action and can't be confused with trying to get a reference to the `ForkChoice` struct.

I've changed the ordering of SSE events when a block is received. It used to be `[block, finalized, head]` and now it's `[block, head, finalized]`. It was easier this way and I don't think we were making any promises about SSE event ordering so it's not "breaking".

I've made it so fork choice will run when it's first constructed. I did this because I wanted to have a cached version of the last call to `get_head`. Ensuring `get_head` has been run *at least once* means that the cached values doesn't need to wrapped in an `Option`. This was fairly simple, it just involved passing a `slot` to the constructor so it knows *when* it's being run. When loading a fork choice from the store and a slot clock isn't handy I've just used the `slot` that was saved in the `fork_choice_store`. That seems like it would be a faithful representation of the slot when we saved it.

I added the `genesis_time: u64` to the `BeaconChain`. It's small, constant and nice to have around.

Since we're using FC for the fin/just checkpoints, we no longer get the `0x00..00` roots at genesis. You can see I had to remove a work-around in `ef-tests` here: b56be3bc2. I can't find any reason why this would be an issue, if anything I think it'll be better since the genesis-alias has caught us out a few times (0x00..00 isn't actually a real root). Edit: I did find a case where the `network` expected the 0x00..00 alias and patched it here: 3f26ac3e2.

You'll notice a lot of changes in tests. Generally, tests should be functionally equivalent. Here are the things creating the most diff-noise in tests:
- Changing tests to be `tokio::async` tests.
- Adding `.await` to fork choice, block processing and block production functions.
- Refactor of the `canonical_head` "API" provided by the `BeaconChain`. E.g., `chain.canonical_head.cached_head()` instead of `chain.canonical_head.read()`.
- Wrapping `SignedBeaconBlock` in an `Arc`.
- In the `beacon_chain/tests/block_verification`, we can't use the `lazy_static` `CHAIN_SEGMENT` variable anymore since it's generated with an async function. We just generate it in each test, not so efficient but hopefully insignificant.

I had to disable `rayon` concurrent tests in the `fork_choice` tests. This is because the use of `rayon` and `block_on` was causing a panic.

Co-authored-by: Mac L <mjladson@pm.me>
2022-07-03 05:36:50 +00:00
Paul Hauner
267d8babc8 Prepare proposer (#3043)
## Issue Addressed

Resolves #2936

## Proposed Changes

Adds functionality for calling [`validator/prepare_beacon_proposer`](https://ethereum.github.io/beacon-APIs/?urls.primaryName=dev#/Validator/prepareBeaconProposer) in advance.

There is a `BeaconChain::prepare_beacon_proposer` method which, which called, computes the proposer for the next slot. If that proposer has been registered via the `validator/prepare_beacon_proposer` API method, then the `beacon_chain.execution_layer` will be provided the `PayloadAttributes` for us in all future forkchoiceUpdated calls. An artificial forkchoiceUpdated call will be created 4s before each slot, when the head updates and when a validator updates their information.

Additionally, I added strict ordering for calls from the `BeaconChain` to the `ExecutionLayer`. I'm not certain the `ExecutionLayer` will always maintain this ordering, but it's a good start to have consistency from the `BeaconChain`. There are some deadlock opportunities introduced, they are documented in the code.

## Additional Info

- ~~Blocked on #2837~~

Co-authored-by: realbigsean <seananderson33@GMAIL.com>
2022-03-09 00:42:05 +00:00
Paul Hauner
015ab7d0a7 Optimize validator duties (#2243)
## Issue Addressed

Closes #2052

## Proposed Changes

- Refactor the attester/proposer duties endpoints in the BN
    - Performance improvements
    - Fixes some potential inconsistencies with the dependent root fields.
    - Removes `http_api::beacon_proposer_cache` and just uses the one on the `BeaconChain` instead.
    - Move the code for the proposer/attester duties endpoints into separate files, for readability.
- Refactor the `DutiesService` in the VC
    - Required to reduce the delay on broadcasting new blocks.
    - Gets rid of the `ValidatorDuty` shim struct that came about when we adopted the standard API.
    - Separate block/attestation duty tasks so that they don't block each other when one is slow.
- In the VC, use `PublicKeyBytes` to represent validators instead of `PublicKey`. `PublicKey` is a legit crypto object whilst `PublicKeyBytes` is just a byte-array, it's much faster to clone/hash `PublicKeyBytes` and this change has had a significant impact on runtimes.
    - Unfortunately this has created lots of dust changes.
 - In the BN, store `PublicKeyBytes` in the `beacon_proposer_cache` and allow access to them. The HTTP API always sends `PublicKeyBytes` over the wire and the conversion from `PublicKey` -> `PublickeyBytes` is non-trivial, especially when queries have 100s/1000s of validators (like Pyrmont).
 - Add the `state_processing::state_advance` mod which dedups a lot of the "apply `n` skip slots to the state" code.
    - This also fixes a bug with some functions which were failing to include a state root as per [this comment](072695284f/consensus/state_processing/src/state_advance.rs (L69-L74)). I couldn't find any instance of this bug that resulted in anything more severe than keying a shuffling cache by the wrong block root.
 - Swap the VC block service to use `mpsc` from `tokio` instead of `futures`. This is consistent with the rest of the code base.
    
~~This PR *reduces* the size of the codebase 🎉~~ It *used* to reduce the size of the code base before I added more comments. 

## Observations on Prymont

- Proposer duties times down from peaks of 450ms to consistent <1ms.
- Current epoch attester duties times down from >1s peaks to a consistent 20-30ms.
- Block production down from +600ms to 100-200ms.

## Additional Info

- ~~Blocked on #2241~~
- ~~Blocked on #2234~~

## TODO

- [x] ~~Refactor this into some smaller PRs?~~ Leaving this as-is for now.
- [x] Address `per_slot_processing` roots.
- [x] Investigate slow next epoch times. Not getting added to cache on block processing?
- [x] Consider [this](072695284f/beacon_node/store/src/hot_cold_store.rs (L811-L812)) in the scenario of replacing the state roots


Co-authored-by: pawan <pawandhananjay@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <michael@sigmaprime.io>
2021-03-17 05:09:57 +00:00
Paul Hauner
88cc222204 Advance state to next slot after importing block (#2174)
## Issue Addressed

NA

## Proposed Changes

Add an optimization to perform `per_slot_processing` from the *leading-edge* of block processing to the *trailing-edge*. Ultimately, this allows us to import the block at slot `n` faster because we used the tail-end of slot `n - 1` to perform `per_slot_processing`.

Additionally, add a "block proposer cache" which allows us to cache the block proposer for some epoch. Since we're now doing trailing-edge `per_slot_processing`, we can prime this cache with the values for the next epoch before those blocks arrive (assuming those blocks don't have some weird forking).

There were several ancillary changes required to achieve this: 

- Remove the `state_root` field  of `BeaconSnapshot`, since there's no need to know it on a `pre_state` and in all other cases we can just read it from `block.state_root()`.
    - This caused some "dust" changes of `snapshot.beacon_state_root` to `snapshot.beacon_state_root()`, where the `BeaconSnapshot::beacon_state_root()` func just reads the state root from the block.
- Rename `types::ShuffingId` to `AttestationShufflingId`. I originally did this because I added a `ProposerShufflingId` struct which turned out to be not so useful. I thought this new name was more descriptive so I kept it.
- Address https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/pull/2196
- Add a debug log when we get a block with an unknown parent. There was previously no logging around this case.
- Add a function to `BeaconState` to compute all proposers for an epoch without re-computing the active indices for each slot.

## Additional Info

- ~~Blocked on #2173~~
- ~~Blocked on #2179~~ That PR was wrapped into this PR.
- There's potentially some places where we could avoid computing the proposer indices in `per_block_processing` but I haven't done this here. These would be an optimization beyond the issue at hand (improving block propagation times) and I think this PR is already doing enough. We can come back for that later.

## TODO

- [x] Tidy, improve comments.
- [x] ~~Try avoid computing proposer index in `per_block_processing`?~~
2021-02-15 07:17:52 +00:00