Non-blocking IO for the masses (WebEngDUS)

I/O is everywhere. I/O is slow. There's no denying it. Using traditional blocking I/O calls can thus be seen as a huge contributor to slow applications. This talk discusses how non-blocking I/O can help in building high performance, event-driven, reactive, concurrent, single-threaded applications (bingo). Don't worry, no need to install Node.js and npm install half the internet. Let's build high-performance applications from scratch with whatever language you're most comfortable with!

---

This talk was presented at WebEngDUS (https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/Web-Engineering-Duesseldorf/events/252097938/) as one of three talks this day (~20 min each). This implies that this is only supposed to be a 101 introduction.

You can find the examples (source code) here: https://gist.github.com/clue/e0425c34c0ab13e8496716aae0219245

Transcript

1. non-blocking I/O for the masses High performance for fun and profit.
2. Agenda - Hello! - 101 of non-blocking I/O - Examples from scratch - Putting into practice - Conclusions 2
3. Hello! 3
4. $ whoami 4
5. $ whoami Christian Lück 5
6. $ whoami Christian Lück 6
7. $ whoami Christian Lueck 7
8. $ whoami Christian Lueck 8
9. $ whoami Christian Lueck @clue 9
10. $ whoami Christian Lueck @another_clue 10
11. $ whoami Christian Lueck @another_clue passionate about pushing the limits 11
12. $ whoami Christian Lueck @another_clue passionate about pushing the limits freelance software engineer 12
13. Who are you? 13 now that you know me…
14. Who are you? 14 now that you know me… - programmers / developers? - architects / engineers?
15. What is non-blocking I/O? 15
16. What is I/O? 16
17. input / output 17
18. IPO 18
19. IPO 19 input = read()
20. IPO 20 input = read() result = process(input)
21. IPO 21 input = read() result = process(input) output(result)
22. I/O is everywhere 22
23. I/O is everywhere third party HTTP APIs (RESTful, SOAP, you name it…) 23
24. I/O is everywhere third party HTTP APIs (RESTful, SOAP, you name it…) mysql, postgres 24
25. I/O is everywhere third party HTTP APIs (RESTful, SOAP, you name it…) mysql, postgres filesystem I/O (session files) 25
26. I/O is everywhere third party HTTP APIs (RESTful, SOAP, you name it…) mysql, postgres filesystem I/O (session files) redis, memcache 26
27. I/O is everywhere! 27
28. 28 Source: Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know: https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832 CPU vs I/O
29. I/O is slow! 29
30. What is non-blocking I/O? 30
31. the idea 31
32. the idea calculations are fast 32
33. the idea calculations are fast I/O is slow 33
34. the idea calculations are fast I/O is slow why wait? 34
35. Show me some code! Programming language? 35
36. Node.js 36
37. Node.js 37 good fit, huge ecosystem
38. Node.js 38 good fit, huge ecosystem did not invent concept
39. Node.js 39 good fit, huge ecosystem did not invent concept npm install…
40. nodejs? 40
41. no js! 41
42. Everybody’s favorite language… 42
43. PHP 43
44. PHP 44 gets the job done
45. PHP 45 gets the job done widespread usage
46. PHP 46 gets the job done widespread usage if PHP can do it…
47. Examples and demo time 47
49. Putting into practice 49
50. Knowing concepts is good! 50 Building from scratch is not!
51. Non-blocking I/O can get complex 51
52. Non-blocking I/O can get complex use abstractions! 52
55. 55 related
56. 56 related event-driven
57. 57 related event-driven asynchronous
58. 58 related event-driven asynchronous multi-threaded
59. core concept 59
60. core concept often intertwined 60
62. for the masses? 62
63. 700 MiB/s 63 dockerd maxed out PHP not
64. 5k requests/s 64 this is a local single core benchmark! dual core i3 => 10k requests/s 36M requests/h
65. 50k OP/s pure PHP who needs native code anyway? 65
66. non-blocking I/O is massively fast 66
67. for the masses? 67
68. when? 68
69. when? 69 app is I/O bound
70. when? 70 app is I/O bound high(er) performance is wanted
71. when? 71 app is I/O bound high(er) performance is wanted blocking and non-blocking can be separated
72. non-blocking I/O is massively useful 72
73. Conclusions 73
74. nbio 74
75. nbio 75 basic paradigm
76. nbio 76 basic paradigm very fast & versatile
77. nbio 77 basic paradigm very fast & versatile consider when app is I/O bound
78. integration 78
79. integration non-blocking and blocking don’t mix well 79
80. integration non-blocking and blocking don’t mix well decide for either approach 80
81. integration non-blocking and blocking don’t mix well decide for either approach isolate & communicate 81
82. ReactPHP 82
83. ReactPHP 83 a real deal and here to stay
84. ReactPHP 84 a real deal and here to stay stable & production ready
85. ReactPHP 85 a real deal and here to stay stable & production ready *awesome*
88. // thank you! $loop->stop(); 88 @another_clue – https://lueck.tv/