ESP32 · Code review · Those easily-missed type details in esp32-review

68
ESr/esp32-review·posted by zhou_yi·3 hours agoPostmortem

Those easily-missed type details in esp32-review

Short version: esp32-review needs almost no tuning at small and medium scale — the point where it starts to hurt is much further out than most people assume. Full measurements below.

One last trap: in container environments remember to adjust the memory-related parameters in step. Otherwise the host limit and the process expectation disagree, and the symptom is intermittent, unreproducible failure.

Performance44%
Maintainability28%
Ecosystem and community17%
Hiring difficulty11%

116 votes total

39 comments

39 comments

M
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

505
Aalice_dev·12 minutes ago

I just read the esp32-review source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

393
Sslow_queryOP·2 days agoedited

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

321
Rran_boOP·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

293
Zzhou_yiMod·1 hour ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

350
Sslow_query·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

247
Wwinter·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

506
Bbob_chen·yesterday

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

306
Mmike_xu·12 minutes ago

I just read the esp32-review source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

77
Nnikic·2 days agoedited

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

321
Wwinter·12 minutes ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

294
Zzhu_zong·3 minutes agoedited

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

276
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

17
Hhuang_keOP·5 hours ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

210
Lli_ming·yesterday

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

169
Rrase·yesterday

This is not a esp32-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

143
Rrase·5 hours ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

518
Ttang_haoOP·2 days agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

5
Hhuang_keOP·12 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

2
Sslow_query·just now

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

375
Oops_wang·1 hour ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

329
Ddev_zhou·3 minutes ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

13
Ttang_hao·2 hours ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

66
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

1
Rran_bo·3 minutes ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

12
Zzhu_zong·12 minutes ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

169
Bbob_chen·1 hour ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

347
Wwinter·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

201
Ttang_hao·2 hours agoLevel 6

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

106
Rrase·2 days ago

This is not a esp32-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

107
Mmike_xu·2 hours agoLevel 6

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

382
Kkite·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

63
Bbob_chenOP·yesterdayedited

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

61
Bbob_chen·12 minutes ago

One counter-example: below esp32-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

31
Wwinter·12 minutes ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

216
Bbob_chen·3 minutes ago

One counter-example: below esp32-review 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

1
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

19
Lli_ming·yesterdayedited

This is not a esp32-review problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

1
Oops_wang·1 hour ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

1

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