Reduce memory usage to represent buffers by up to 50% (#10321)
This should help with some of the memory problems reported in https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8436, especially the ones related to large files (see: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/8436#issuecomment2037442695), by **reducing the memory required to represent a buffer in Zed by ~50%.** ### How? Zed's memory consumption is dominated by the in-memory representation of buffer contents. On the lowest level, the buffer is represented as a [Rope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(data_structure)) and that's where the most memory is used. The layers above — buffer, syntax map, fold map, display map, ... — basically use "no memory" compared to the Rope. Zed's `Rope` data structure is itself implemented as [a `SumTree` of `Chunks`](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/8205c52d2bc204b8234f9306562d9000b1691857/crates/rope/src/rope.rs#L35-L38). An important constant at play here is `CHUNK_BASE`: `CHUNK_BASE` is the maximum length of a single text `Chunk` in the `SumTree` underlying the `Rope`. In other words: It determines into how many pieces a given buffer is split up. By changing `CHUNK_BASE` we can adjust the level of granularity withwhich we index a given piece of text. Theoretical maximum is the length of the text, theoretical minimum is 1. Sweet spot is somewhere inbetween, where memory use and performance of write & read access are optimal. We started with `16` as the `CHUNK_BASE`, but that wasn't the result of extensive benchmarks, more the first reasonable number that came to mind. ### What This changes `CHUNK_BASE` from `16` to `64`. That reduces the memory usage, trading it in for slight reduction in performance in certain benchmarks. ### Benchmarks I added a benchmark suite for `Rope` to determine whether we'd regress in performance as `CHUNK_BASE` goes up. I went from `16` to `32` and then to `64`. While `32` increased performance and reduced memory usage, `64` had one slight drop in performance, increases in other benchmarks and substantial memory savings. | `CHUNK_BASE` from `16` to `32` | `CHUNK_BASE` from `16` to `64` | |-------------------|--------------------| |  |  | ### Real World Results We tested this by loading a 138 MB `*.tex` file (parsed as plain text) into Zed and measuring in `Instruments.app` the allocation. #### standard allocator Before, with `CHUNK_BASE: 16`, the memory usage was ~827MB after loading the buffer. | `CHUNK_BASE: 16` | |---------------------| |  | After, with `CHUNK_BASE: 64`, the memory usage was ~396MB after loading the buffer. | `CHUNK_BASE: 64` | |---------------------| |  | #### `mimalloc` `MiMalloc` by default and that seems to be pretty aggressive when it comes to growing memory. Whereas the std allocator would go up to ~800mb, MiMalloc would jump straight to 1024MB. I also can't get `MiMalloc` to work properly with `Instruments.app` (it always shows 15MB of memory usage) so I had to use these `Activity Monitor` screenshots: | `CHUNK_BASE: 16` | |---------------------| |  | | `CHUNK_BASE: 64` | |---------------------| |  | ### Release Notes Release Notes: - Reduced memory usage for files by up to 50%. --------- Co-authored-by: Antonio <antonio@zed.dev>
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Thorsten Ball committed
0533923f91c4a7ce2bb4fb74b82cdc881a193aa2
Parent: b6857ca
Committed by GitHub <noreply@github.com>
on 4/9/2024, 4:07:53 PM