I just tried adding logic to call SystemClock.init() 100,000 times. It made no 
difference. The GC test still fails.

Ralph

> On Apr 2, 2021, at 7:18 AM, Carter Kozak <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Escape analysis can take quite a few iterations to take effect, perhaps we 
> need a few more tens of thousands of warmup cycles? Admittedly I haven't 
> taken a look at the failures yet and there's a great deal of subtlety around 
> this. I can try to take a closer look later, unfortunately I've been 
> overwhelmed lately.
> 
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, at 03:59, Ralph Goers wrote:
>> Looking at the source repo I don’t see anything that changed after support 
>> for the higher precision was added.
>> 
>> Ralph
>> 
>>> On Apr 2, 2021, at 12:44 AM, Ralph Goers <[email protected] 
>>> <mailto:ralph.goers%40dslextreme.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Yes, I was just thinking that. But if there was a bug fix along the way 
>>> that added a single line of code that could now be causing the code not to 
>>> be inlined.
>>> 
>>> Ralph
>>> 
>>>> On Apr 2, 2021, at 12:38 AM, Remko Popma <[email protected] 
>>>> <mailto:remko.popma%40gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 4:26 PM Ralph Goers <[email protected] 
>>>> <mailto:ralph.goers%40dslextreme.com>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> I will take a look at the link. What you are saying makes sense to a
>>>>> degree. However, the new is actually performed in Instant.create() which 
>>>>> is
>>>>> 2 levels down in the call stack. Without having read the link I would
>>>>> wonder if that qualifies.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> That is at the code level, yes. But these get inlined when called
>>>> sufficiently often.
>>>> So it is difficult to reason about what is eligible for escape analysis
>>>> just from the code...
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Ralph
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Apr 2, 2021, at 12:00 AM, Remko Popma <[email protected] 
>>>>>> <mailto:remko.popma%40gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> My understanding is that PreciseClock is garbage-free because the JVM
>>>>> does
>>>>>> escape analysis.
>>>>>> Here is the relevant code:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> public void init(MutableInstant mutableInstant) {
>>>>>> Instant instant = java.time.Clock.systemUTC().instant();
>>>>>> mutableInstant.initFromEpochSecond(instant.getEpochSecond(),
>>>>>> instant.getNano());
>>>>>> }
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The code calls the instant() method, which returns an Instant object.
>>>>>> We would think that this is not garbage-free, but it magically is thanks
>>>>> to
>>>>>> escape analysis!
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> This Instant object is only used within the init(MutableInstant) method.
>>>>>> It is not allowed to "escape": the method accesses fields in Instant, and
>>>>>> passes these primitive values to the initFromEpochSecond method (and does
>>>>>> not pass the Instant object itself).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In theory, JVM escape analysis is able to detect that the object is not
>>>>>> referenced outside that method, and stops allocating the object
>>>>> altogether,
>>>>>> and instead does something called "scalar replacement", where it just
>>>>> uses
>>>>>> the values that are actually being used, without putting them in an
>>>>> object
>>>>>> first and then getting them out of the object again to use these values.
>>>>>> More details here: https://www.beyondjava.net/escape-analysis-java and
>>>>>> https://shipilev.net/jvm/anatomy-quarks/18-scalar-replacement/
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think I tested this on Java 9, and the
>>>>>> Google java-allocation-instrumenter library could not detect allocations.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Has that changed: do the garbage-free tests fail
>>>>>> for org.apache.logging.log4j.core.util.SystemClock?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Note that when looking at this in a sampling profiler it may show
>>>>>> allocations. (We actually ran into this in a work project.)
>>>>>> Profiles tend to disable the optimizations that allow escape analysis, so
>>>>>> our method may show up as allocating when looked at in a profiler, while
>>>>> in
>>>>>> real life it will not (after sufficient warmup).
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 2:46 PM Ralph Goers <[email protected] 
>>>>>> <mailto:ralph.goers%40dslextreme.com>>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Apr 1, 2021, at 10:38 PM, Ralph Goers <[email protected] 
>>>>>>>> <mailto:ralph.goers%40dslextreme.com>>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> In thinking about this problem I suspect we never noticed that the
>>>>>>> PreciseClock version of our SystemClock class is not garbage free is
>>>>>>> because we previously ran all of our unit tests with Java 8.  Now that
>>>>> they
>>>>>>> are using Java 11 that code is being exercised.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I’ve looked at java.time.Clock and java.time.Instant. As far as I know
>>>>>>> those are the only two classes in Java that provide sub-millisecond
>>>>>>> granularity. Unfortunately there is no way to call them to extract the
>>>>>>> field data we need to initialize MutableInstant. I considered modifying
>>>>> our
>>>>>>> version of SystemClock to perform the same actions as java.time’s
>>>>>>> SystemClock but the relevant method there calls
>>>>>>> jdk.internal.misc.VM.getNanoTimeAdjustment() to correct the
>>>>> sub-millisecond
>>>>>>> portion. That is implemented as a native method and seems to only be
>>>>>>> available to be called by an application when something like --add-opens
>>>>>>> java.base/jdk.internal.misc=xxx is on the command line.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I’ve also considered disabling the PreciseClock when garbage free mode
>>>>>>> is enabled but as far as I can tell we don’t have a single switch for
>>>>> that.
>>>>>>> So I would have to add yet another system property to control it.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> One other option is to modify the documentation to indicate timestamps
>>>>> are
>>>>>>> not garbage free. But this seems awful since virtually every log event
>>>>> has
>>>>>>> one. It would make more sense to use the property to determine which to
>>>>> use
>>>>>>> so user’s who wish to be garbage free can continue with millisecond
>>>>>>> granularity.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Ralph
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 


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