Merge pull request #709 from Michael-F-Bryan/speed

Speed
This commit is contained in:
2016-06-04 11:33:05 -07:00
+206 -2
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@@ -226,13 +226,212 @@ Numba
-----
.. todo:: Write about Numba and the autojit compiler for NumPy
Threading
:::::::::
Concurrency
:::::::::::
Concurrent.futures
------------------
The `concurrent.futures`_ module is a module in the standard library that
provides a "high-level interface for asynchronously executing callables". It
abstracts away a lot of the more complicated details about using multiple
threads or processes for concurrency, and allows the user to focus on
accomplishing the task at hand.
The `concurrent.futures`_ module exposes two main classes, the
`ThreadPoolExecutor` and the `ProcessPoolExecutor`. The ThreadPoolExecutor
will create a pool of worker threads that a user can submit jobs to. These jobs
will then be executed in another thread when the next worker thread becomes
available.
The ProcessPoolExecutor works in the same way, except instead of using multiple
threads for its workers, it will use multiple processes. This makes it possible
to side-step the GIL, however because of the way things are passed to worker
processes, only picklable objects can be executed and returned.
Because of the way the GIL works, a good rule of thumb is to use a
ThreadPoolExecutor when the task being executed involves a lot of blocking
(i.e. making requests over the network) and to use a ProcessPoolExecutor
executor when the task is computationally expensive.
There are two main ways of executing things in parallel using the two
Executors. One way is with the `map(func, iterables)` method. This works
almost exactly like the builtin `map()` function, except it will execute
everything in parallel. :
.. code-block:: python
from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
import requests
def get_webpage(url):
page = requests.get(url)
return page
pool = ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5)
my_urls = ['http://google.com/']*10 # Create a list of urls
for page in pool.map(get_webpage, my_urls):
# Do something with the result
print(page.text)
For even more control, the `submit(func, *args, **kwargs)` method will schedule
a callable to be executed ( as `func(*args, **kwargs)`) and returns a `Future`_
object that represents the execution of the callable.
The Future object provides various methods that can be used to check on the
progress of the scheduled callable. These include:
cancel()
Attempt to cancel the call.
cancelled()
Return True if the call was successfully cancelled.
running()
Return True if the call is currently being executed and cannot be
cancelled.
done()
Return True if the call was successfully cancelled or finished running.
result()
Return the value returned by the call. Note that this call will block until
the scheduled callable returns by default.
exception()
Return the exception raised by the call. If no exception was raised then
this returns `None`. Note that this will block just like `result()`.
add_done_callback(fn)
Attach a callback function that will be executed (as `fn(future)`) when the
scheduled callable returns.
.. code-block:: python
from concurrent.futures import ProcessPoolExecutor, as_completed
def is_prime(n):
if n % 2 == 0:
return n, False
sqrt_n = int(n**0.5)
for i in range(3, sqrt_n + 1, 2):
if n % i == 0:
return n, False
return n, True
PRIMES = [
112272535095293,
112582705942171,
112272535095293,
115280095190773,
115797848077099,
1099726899285419]
futures = []
with ProcessPoolExecutor(max_workers=4) as pool:
# Schedule the ProcessPoolExecutor to check if a number is prime
# and add the returned Future to our list of futures
for p in PRIMES:
fut = pool.submit(is_prime, p)
futures.append(fut)
# As the jobs are completed, print out the results
for number, result in as_completed(futures):
if result:
print("{} is prime".format(number))
else:
print("{} is not prime".format(number))
The `concurrent.futures`_ module contains two helper functions for working with
Futures. The `as_completed(futures)` function returns an iterator over the list
of futures, yielding the futures as they complete.
The `wait(futures)` function will simply block until all futures in the list of
futures provided have completed.
For more information, on using the `concurrent.futures`_ module, consult the
official documentation.
Threading
---------
The standard library comes with a `threading`_ module that allows a user to
work with multiple threads manually.
Running a function in another thread is as simple as passing a callable and
it's arguments to `Thread`'s constructor and then calling `start()`:
.. code-block:: python
from threading import Thread
import requests
def get_webpage(url):
page = requests.get(url)
return page
some_thread = Thread(get_webpage, 'http://google.com/')
some_thread.start()
To wait until the thread has terminated, call `join()`:
.. code-block:: python
some_thread.join()
After calling `join()`, it is always a good idea to check whether the thread is
still alive (because the join call timed out):
.. code-block:: python
if some_thread.is_alive():
print("join() must have timed out.")
else:
print("Our thread has terminated.")
Because multiple threads have access to the same section of memory, sometimes
there might be situations where two or more threads are trying to write to the
same resource at the same time or where the output is dependent on the sequence
or timing of certain events. This is called a `data race`_ or race condition.
When this happens, the output will be garbled or you may encounter problems
which are difficult to debug. A good example is this `stackoverflow post`_.
The way this can be avoided is by using a `Lock`_ that each thread needs to
acquire before writing to a shared resource. Locks can be acquired and released
through either the contextmanager protocol (`with` statement), or by using
`acquire()` and `release()` directly. Here is a (rather contrived) example:
.. code-block:: python
from threading import Lock, Thread
file_lock = Lock()
def log(msg):
with file_lock:
open('website_changes.log', 'w') as f:
f.write(changes)
def monitor_website(some_website):
"""
Monitor a website and then if there are any changes,
log them to disk.
"""
while True:
changes = check_for_changes(some_website)
if changes:
log(changes)
websites = ['http://google.com/', ... ]
for website in websites:
t = Thread(monitor_website, website)
t.start()
Here, we have a bunch of threads checking for changes on a list of sites and
whenever there are any changes, they attempt to write those changes to a file
by calling `log(changes)`. When `log()` is called, it will wait to acquire
the lock with `with file_lock:`. This ensures that at any one time, only one
thread is writing to the file.
Spawning Processes
------------------
@@ -248,3 +447,8 @@ Multiprocessing
.. _`New GIL`: http://www.dabeaz.com/python/NewGIL.pdf
.. _`Special care`: http://docs.python.org/c-api/init.html#threads
.. _`David Beazley's`: http://www.dabeaz.com/GIL/gilvis/measure2.py
.. _`concurrent.futures`: https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrent.futures.html
.. _`Future`: https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrent.futures.html#concurrent.futures.Future
.. _`threading`: https://docs.python.org/3/library/threading.html
.. _`stackoverflow post`: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26688424/python-threads-are-printing-at-the-same-time-messing-up-the-text-output
.. _`data race`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition