[tor-dev] Parallel Crypto - Library dep.

[David Goulet]

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On 12-01-31 03:08 PM, Watson Ladd wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:46 PM, David Goulet <dgoulet at ev0ke.net> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> To help the tor project, I'll contribute some of my spare time to improve
> multithreading for the Tor code base.
>> Color me confused: This is for taking advantage of multiprocessor
>> systems, correct?

Yep :)

> I've speak a bit with Nick M. and it seems the crypto lib is an important part
> to begin with. The wiki page
> (https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/projects/Tor/MultithreadedCrypto)
> indicates, basically, that a worker thread pool with a work queue to dispatch
> crypto events should be the right approach and I do agree.
> 
> Is it acceptable to link an external library to the project being a dependence?
> 
> The library I'm thinking about is "liburcu" which stands for user-space RCU
> (http://lttng.org/urcu). It's a complete set of lockless data structure
> including wait-free queue which can be very useful for our case. It support a
> large variety of architecture and works on BSD and Linux. The Linux kernel use
> RCU mechanism for a lot of internal data structure today so it's quite tested
> and solid.
>> One future issue I foresee is the use of batching oriented crypto
>> operations. If we use binary Edwards curves for speed in the onion
>> skins, then batching becomes a major timesaver. The obvious way to do
>> this is with workers grabbing and putting back batches, but we also
>> want to maintain responsiveness. If a router is getting low traffic it
>> shouldn't wait forever to fill up a batch.

Indeed. Adding latency to a node is just a no go I think so definitely things to
consider.

Thanks!
David

> 
> The question I think is do we want lockless data structure in Tor or it's not
> and will not be necessary for the type of workload ? (lockless re-sizable hash
> tables, red-black tree, stack, linked-list (double also) and queue are available
> as of today).
> 
> Waiting on your feedback guys, either way, I'll begin implementing parallel
> crypto largely based on the wiki page (really good ideas there).
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> David
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> Sincerely,
> Watson Ladd

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