[Python-Dev] bpo-34837: Multiprocessing.Pool API Extension - Pass Data to Workers w/o Globals

Tue Oct 16 17:53:19 EDT 2018

Is your concern something like the following?

with Pool(8) as p:
    gen = p.imap_unordered(func, ls)
    first_elem = next(gen)
    p.apply_async(long_func, x)
    remaining_elems = [elem for elem in gen]

...here, if we store "func" on each worker Process as a global, and execute
this pattern above, we will likely alter state of one of the worker
processes s.t. it stores "long_func" in place of the initial "func".

So yes, this could break things. *A potential solution*:

Replace "func" in the task tuple with an identifier (maybe, *perhaps
> naively*, func.__qualname__), and store the "identifier => func map"
> somewhere globally accessible, maybe as a class attribute on Pool. On any
> call to Pool.map, Pool.apply, etc... this map is updated. Then, in the
> worker process, as each task is processed, we use the "func identifier" on
> the task to recover the globally mapped 'func', and apply it.

This would avoid the weird stateful bug above. We could also do something
slightly different to this if folks are averse to the "Pool class-attribute
func map" (i.e. averse to globals), and store this map as an Instance
Attribute on the Pool object, and wrap the "initializer" func to make the
map globally available in the worker via the "global" keyword.

One note: this isn't a "cache", it's just a global map which has its keys &
values updated *blindly* with every call to Pool.<public_method>. It serves
as a way to bypass repeated serialization of functions in Pool, which can
be large when bound to big objects (like large class instances, or
functools.partial objects).

On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 9:27 AM Michael Selik <michael.selik at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Would this change the other pool method behavior in some way if the user,
> for whatever reason, mixed techniques?
>
> imap_unordered will only block when nexting the generator. If the user
> mingles nexting that generator with, say, apply_async, could the change
> you're proposing have some side-effect?
>
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 5:09 AM Sean Harrington <seanharr11 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> @Nataniel this is what I am suggesting as well. No cacheing - just
>> storing the `fn` on each worker, rather than pickling it for each item in
>> our iterable.
>>
>> As long as we store the `fn` post-fork on the worker process (perhaps as
>> global), subsequent calls to Pool.map shouldn't be effected (referencing
>> Antoine's & Michael's points that "multiprocessing encapsulates each
>> subprocesses globals in a separate namespace").
>>
>> @Antoine - I'm making an effort to take everything you've said into
>> consideration here.  My initial PR and talk
>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH0JVSXvxu0> was intended to shed light
>> on a couple of pitfalls that I often see Python end-users encounter with
>> Pool. Moving beyond my naive first attempt, and the onslaught of deserved
>> criticism, it seems that we have an opportunity here: No changes to the
>> interface, just an optimization to reduce the frequency of pickling.
>>
>> Raymond Hettinger may also be interested in this optimization, as he
>> speaks (with great analogies) about different ways you can misuse
>> concurrency in Python <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zinZmE3Ogk>.
>> This would address one of the pitfalls that he outlines: the "size of the
>> serialized/deserialized data".
>>
>> Is this an optimization that either of you would be willing to review,
>> and accept, if I find there is a *reasonable way* to implement it?
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 3:40 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 06:09 Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 12 Oct 2018 08:33:32 -0400
>>>> Sean Harrington <seanharr11 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > Hi Nathaniel - this if this solution can be made performant, than I
>>>> would
>>>> > be more than satisfied.
>>>> >
>>>> > I think this would require removing "func" from the "task tuple", and
>>>> > storing the "func" "once per worker" somewhere globally (maybe a class
>>>> > attribute set post-fork?).
>>>> >
>>>> > This also has the beneficial outcome of increasing general
>>>> performance of
>>>> > Pool.map and friends. I've seen MANY folks across the interwebs doing
>>>> > things like passing instance methods to map, resulting in "big"
>>>> tasks, and
>>>> > slower-than-sequential parallelized code. Parallelizing "instance
>>>> methods"
>>>> > by passing them to map, w/o needing to wrangle with staticmethods and
>>>> > globals, would be a GREAT feature! It'd just be as easy as:
>>>> >
>>>> >     Pool.map(self.func, ls)
>>>> >
>>>> > What do you think about this idea? This is something I'd be able to
>>>> take
>>>> > on, assuming I get a few core dev blessings...
>>>>
>>>> Well, I'm not sure how it would work, so it's difficult to give an
>>>> opinion.  How do you plan to avoid passing "self"?  By caching (by
>>>> equality? by identity?)?  Something else?  But what happens if "self"
>>>> changed value (in the case of a mutable object) in the parent?  Do you
>>>> keep using the stale version in the child?  That would break
>>>> compatibility...
>>>>
>>>
>>> I was just suggesting that within a single call to Pool.map, it would be
>>> reasonable optimization to only send the fn once to each worker. So e.g. if
>>> you have 5 workers and 1000 items, you'd only pickle fn 5 times, rather
>>> than 1000 times like we do now. I wouldn't want to get any fancier than
>>> that with caching data between different map calls or anything.
>>>
>>> Of course even this may turn out to be too complicated to implement in a
>>> reasonable way, since it would require managing some extra state on the
>>> workers. But semantically it would be purely an optimization of current
>>> semantics.
>>>
>>> -n
>>>
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