In order to better integrate async I/O, we are going to make it responsible for driving the scheduler event loop. I think we should take this opportunity to rewrite the scheduler in Rust, which takes us a long way toward rewriting the entire runtime in Rust and enabling freestanding Rust.

Links

rt module: https://github.com/brson/rust/blob/io/src/libcore/rt/mod.rs
io module: https://github.com/brson/rust/blob/io/src/libcore/rt/io/mod.rs
sched module: https://github.com/brson/rust/blob/io/src/libcore/rt/sched.rs

• August 2013 status update: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-August/005158.html
• June 2013 status update and work items: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-May/004305.html
• Initial pull with exposition: A new scheduler prototype #5022
• Scheduler performance update: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-May/004127.html
• Early mailing list thread about I/O design: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-April/003746.html
• I/O design: https://github.com/mozilla/rust/wiki/Lib-io (not updated)
• Discussion about conditions and Option: http://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1fod5c/io_and_condition_handlers/

Current work items

Scheduler

• Scheduler work stealing. #3095 Add work stealing
• Write a parallel deque for work stealing #4877 Write a parallel deque
• Store ~Task in thread local storage instead of ~Scheduler #6855 Fix design so we can have non-green thread tasks
• SchedulerPolicy
• Add the SchedHandle type
• Add task pinning #6933 Add 'pinned tasks'
• Add task forwarding #6934 Add 'task forwarding'
• Need a solution for select / async events #6842 Figure out how to select on multiple events
• Eliminate unsafety from scheduler operations #6210 Fix design to avoid unsafe aliased, mutable pointers.
• Implement MessageQueue without locks #6837 Lock-free message queue
• Implement SleeperList without locks #6838 Lock-free sleeper list
• Separate context switching from multithreaded scheduling #6856 Extract single-threaded coroutine features from the multithreaded scheduler
• Track task ownership and visualize #6926 Monitoring task transfer and remote debugging
• Use a phantom type to indicate task/scheduler context in Scheduler #7011 Scheduler phantom types

I/O related

• Redesign the I/O library and traits #4248 Redesign I/O library (more subtasks under this one)
• Make I/O threadsafe #6843 I/O scheduler affinity.
• Put uv in its own crate #5019 Move core::rt::uv to its own crate
• Segfault with simple twiddle objects #5192 Fix ~object
• Non-blocking stdin/stdout/stderr #6846 stdin/out/err
• Port standard libraries to new I/O #6850 Port libs to new I/O

Runtime porting

• Port pipes to new scheduler #5018 Port pipes to new scheduler
• Make logging work with new runtime code #5021 Rewrite logging
• Add box annihilator
• Port stack growth to new scheduler #6844 Port segmented stacks
• Add support for no_split_stack attribute to LLVM. Use it on main #1226 Add no_split_stack attribute to LLVM
• Remove dependency on rust_kernel from random number code #6280 Port random numbers
• Implement unkillable, rekillable and atomically for newsched #6377 unkillable etc.
• Add SharedChan for newsched #6579 SharedChan
• Remove C++ scheduler #6587 Remove C++ scheduler
• Port pipes compiler to newsched #7666 Move pipes compiler runtime to extra #7667 Pipes compiler porting

Constraints

• I/O is provided per-scheduler (per-thread) by libuv and schedulers are driven by the event loop.
• I/O handles are tied to the event loop (and therefore thread/scheduler) on which they were created. They have 'scheduler affinity'. Because tasks may migrate threads and I/O handles may move between tasks, before every I/O operation a task must arrange to be running on the correct scheduler.
• We must be able to allocate an entire scheduler (thread) exclusively to a single task (called "1:1 scheduling"). This is important for making blocking calls and for getting better, more predictable scheduling by relying on the OS.
• We want to try a work stealing scheduling strategy. Under work stealing, tasks are scheduled greedily, as soon as they are available to run, on the thread that is trying to schedule them. Descheduled tasks are 'stolen' and executed by other threads. Work stealing appears to be widely accepted as a simple but well-performing way to schedule green threads. Should be good for data locality and require minimal locking.

Concepts

• Task - The current state of a task. An owned type that is passed between schedulers and other runtime objects. It mostly provides task-local runtime services that are exposed through the language and core API's, e.g. local heap, logging , GC, unwinding, TLS. Unlike the previous scheduler, Task's do not need to be scheduled as coroutines.
• Scheduler - Schedulers provide the mechanism for scheduling and descheduling Tasks within a single thread. The runtime may consist of multiple threads, each one with a Scheduler. A Scheduler instance is (almost) always accessible via thread-local storage.
• Coroutine - The stored CPU context and the stack of a single task, executed by Schedulers. Not sure this is the best name yet. Would also like to use this for task-local coroutines that have no task state of their own.
• SchedHandle - A handle for communicating to remote Schedulers. For task forwarding, probably also to wake up sleeping schedulers when new work becomes available.
• Task pinning - A pinned task is one that must always run on a specific scheduler. A task that is pinned contains a SchedHandle which, when scheduling, must be used to first send the task to the scheduler it is pinned to. This is for creating 1:1 relationships between tasks and schedulers, also for pinning to the platform thread.
• Task forwarding - Again, for 1:1 task/schedulers. Schedulers can be configured to only run tasks which are pinned to them. In these cases, the Scheduler contains a SchedHandle to some other Scheduler, and when scheduling a task which is not pinned it must send the task elsewhere.
• I/O scheduler affinity - I/O objects that are tied to a scheduler must similarly contain a SchedHandle and arrange to run on the correct thread before executing.
• Sleeping - Schedulers that cannot obtain a task to schedule goes to sleep. A sleeping scheduler must be woken by other schedulers to resume scheduling tasks.

Scheduler multithreading

Most of the thread synchronization in Rust should be performed in Rust tasks, using pipes. The Scheduler itself should do as little as it can.

Tasks are owned types. When they are running their ~Task pointer is stored in thread local storage. When they are not running they are owned by whatever object they are blocked on. Scheduling a task means acquiring ownership of a ~Task, then passing ownership to a Scheduler. Blocking a task means taking ownership of a ~Task from thread-local storage, stuffing it somewhere else and context switching.

There are several places where schedulers need to synchronize with the outside world.

• WorkQueue - work stealing deque
• MessageQueue - message passing between schedulers
• WorkList - The shared list of WorkQueues of active schedulers and SchedHandles of sleeping schedulers.
• SleeperList - The shared collection (currently a stack) of sleeping schedulers.

The first is the WorkQueue, which is a work-stealing deque. Tasks can be pushed onto or popped from the front of the queue by a single thread. Tasks can be popped from the back of the queue (stolen) by an arbitrary number of threads. The WorkQueue is the primary mechanism for distributing tasks across threads. Importantly, under the work stealing strategy, most of the burden of distributing tasks to threads is put on those threads that otherwise are not working. The local scheduler just drops work into the (lock-free) queue and goes about its business.

The second is the MessageQueue through which tasks are forwarded from other schedulers. Tasks can be popped from the front of the queue by a single thread (the local Scheduler). Tasks can be pushed onto the back of the queue by an arbitrary number of threads. Sends to the MessageQueue are performed with the SchedHandle and are accompanied by a signal to wake up the Scheduler if it is asleep.

The MessageQueue is higher priority than the WorkQueue, as the former contains tasks that must specifically be acted on by the associated Scheduler, while the later contains work that can be stolen by other threads. An example of where messages should probably be checked is before spawning - some other thread can create the task, but no other thread can handle the message.

The SchedHandle also serves as a reference count keeping schedulers running. Schedulers exit when there are no remaining I/O events, no available tasks to run, and no outstanding SchedHandles.

Work stealing

See #3095 (comment)

TODO

• Signalling and waking up schedulers

How do sleeping schedulers become aware that there is new work to be stolen? This needs to impose minimum synchronization on the non-sleeping schedulers. Papers seem to imply busy-waiting.

Risks

• The combination of task pinning and I/O affinity could lead to tricky situations where a task is pinned to one scheduler but has I/O affinity for a different scheduler.
• I still don't have a solution for select-like behavior.

Scheduler policy and operations

TODO

• Impact of I/O
• Work stealing vs. work sharing
• 1:1 scheduling

Alternatives

• If I/O handles were not sendable then the logic for keeping I/O-bound tasks on the right thread would be simpler and less error-prone.
• It may be possible to not implement task pinning if we can successfully implement tasks as threads, entirely without the scheduler, and if we can live without having an event loop on the 'platform thread' (the C main thread). This wouldn't remove the need for the message queue though, because of I/O.