Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

timers: move big impl comment to /internal/ #26761

Closed
wants to merge 1 commit into from
Closed

timers: move big impl comment to /internal/ #26761

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
72 changes: 72 additions & 0 deletions lib/internal/timers.js
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,5 +1,77 @@
'use strict';

// HOW and WHY the timers implementation works the way it does.
//
// Timers are crucial to Node.js. Internally, any TCP I/O connection creates a
// timer so that we can time out of connections. Additionally, many user
// libraries and applications also use timers. As such there may be a
// significantly large amount of timeouts scheduled at any given time.
// Therefore, it is very important that the timers implementation is performant
// and efficient.
//
// Note: It is suggested you first read through the lib/internal/linkedlist.js
// linked list implementation, since timers depend on it extensively. It can be
// somewhat counter-intuitive at first, as it is not actually a class. Instead,
// it is a set of helpers that operate on an existing object.
//
// In order to be as performant as possible, the architecture and data
// structures are designed so that they are optimized to handle the following
// use cases as efficiently as possible:

// - Adding a new timer. (insert)
// - Removing an existing timer. (remove)
// - Handling a timer timing out. (timeout)
//
// Whenever possible, the implementation tries to make the complexity of these
// operations as close to constant-time as possible.
// (So that performance is not impacted by the number of scheduled timers.)
//
// Object maps are kept which contain linked lists keyed by their duration in
// milliseconds.
//
/* eslint-disable node-core/non-ascii-character */
//
// ╔════ > Object Map
// ║
// ╠══
// ║ lists: { '40': { }, '320': { etc } } (keys of millisecond duration)
// ╚══ ┌────┘
// │
// ╔══ │
// ║ TimersList { _idleNext: { }, _idlePrev: (self) }
// ║ ┌────────────────┘
// ║ ╔══ │ ^
// ║ ║ { _idleNext: { }, _idlePrev: { }, _onTimeout: (callback) }
// ║ ║ ┌───────────┘
// ║ ║ │ ^
// ║ ║ { _idleNext: { etc }, _idlePrev: { }, _onTimeout: (callback) }
// ╠══ ╠══
// ║ ║
// ║ ╚════ > Actual JavaScript timeouts
// ║
// ╚════ > Linked List
//
/* eslint-enable node-core/non-ascii-character */
//
// With this, virtually constant-time insertion (append), removal, and timeout
// is possible in the JavaScript layer. Any one list of timers is able to be
// sorted by just appending to it because all timers within share the same
// duration. Therefore, any timer added later will always have been scheduled to
// timeout later, thus only needing to be appended.
// Removal from an object-property linked list is also virtually constant-time
// as can be seen in the lib/internal/linkedlist.js implementation.
// Timeouts only need to process any timers currently due to expire, which will
// always be at the beginning of the list for reasons stated above. Any timers
// after the first one encountered that does not yet need to timeout will also
// always be due to timeout at a later time.
//
// Less-than constant time operations are thus contained in two places:
// The PriorityQueue — an efficient binary heap implementation that does all
// operations in worst-case O(log n) time — which manages the order of expiring
// Timeout lists and the object map lookup of a specific list by the duration of
// timers within (or creation of a new list). However, these operations combined
// have shown to be trivial in comparison to other timers architectures.

const {
scheduleTimer,
toggleTimerRef,
Expand Down
72 changes: 0 additions & 72 deletions lib/timers.js
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -63,78 +63,6 @@ const {
emitDestroy
} = require('internal/async_hooks');

// HOW and WHY the timers implementation works the way it does.
//
// Timers are crucial to Node.js. Internally, any TCP I/O connection creates a
// timer so that we can time out of connections. Additionally, many user
// libraries and applications also use timers. As such there may be a
// significantly large amount of timeouts scheduled at any given time.
// Therefore, it is very important that the timers implementation is performant
// and efficient.
//
// Note: It is suggested you first read through the lib/internal/linkedlist.js
// linked list implementation, since timers depend on it extensively. It can be
// somewhat counter-intuitive at first, as it is not actually a class. Instead,
// it is a set of helpers that operate on an existing object.
//
// In order to be as performant as possible, the architecture and data
// structures are designed so that they are optimized to handle the following
// use cases as efficiently as possible:

// - Adding a new timer. (insert)
// - Removing an existing timer. (remove)
// - Handling a timer timing out. (timeout)
//
// Whenever possible, the implementation tries to make the complexity of these
// operations as close to constant-time as possible.
// (So that performance is not impacted by the number of scheduled timers.)
//
// Object maps are kept which contain linked lists keyed by their duration in
// milliseconds.
//
/* eslint-disable node-core/non-ascii-character */
//
// ╔════ > Object Map
// ║
// ╠══
// ║ lists: { '40': { }, '320': { etc } } (keys of millisecond duration)
// ╚══ ┌────┘
// │
// ╔══ │
// ║ TimersList { _idleNext: { }, _idlePrev: (self) }
// ║ ┌────────────────┘
// ║ ╔══ │ ^
// ║ ║ { _idleNext: { }, _idlePrev: { }, _onTimeout: (callback) }
// ║ ║ ┌───────────┘
// ║ ║ │ ^
// ║ ║ { _idleNext: { etc }, _idlePrev: { }, _onTimeout: (callback) }
// ╠══ ╠══
// ║ ║
// ║ ╚════ > Actual JavaScript timeouts
// ║
// ╚════ > Linked List
//
/* eslint-enable node-core/non-ascii-character */
//
// With this, virtually constant-time insertion (append), removal, and timeout
// is possible in the JavaScript layer. Any one list of timers is able to be
// sorted by just appending to it because all timers within share the same
// duration. Therefore, any timer added later will always have been scheduled to
// timeout later, thus only needing to be appended.
// Removal from an object-property linked list is also virtually constant-time
// as can be seen in the lib/internal/linkedlist.js implementation.
// Timeouts only need to process any timers currently due to expire, which will
// always be at the beginning of the list for reasons stated above. Any timers
// after the first one encountered that does not yet need to timeout will also
// always be due to timeout at a later time.
//
// Less-than constant time operations are thus contained in two places:
// The PriorityQueue — an efficient binary heap implementation that does all
// operations in worst-case O(log n) time — which manages the order of expiring
// Timeout lists and the object map lookup of a specific list by the duration of
// timers within (or creation of a new list). However, these operations combined
// have shown to be trivial in comparison to other timers architectures.

// Remove a timer. Cancels the timeout and resets the relevant timer properties.
function unenroll(item) {
// Fewer checks may be possible, but these cover everything.
Expand Down