## Summary
Built on top of the tooling and ideas introduced in
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/2528, this PR introduces
a synthetic benchmark for measuring and assessing the performance
characteristics of the approval-voting and approval-distribution
subsystems.

Currently this allows, us to simulate the behaviours of these systems
based on the following dimensions:
```
TestConfiguration:
# Test 1
- objective: !ApprovalsTest
    last_considered_tranche: 89
    min_coalesce: 1
    max_coalesce: 6
    enable_assignments_v2: true
    send_till_tranche: 60
    stop_when_approved: false
    coalesce_tranche_diff: 12
    workdir_prefix: "/tmp"
    num_no_shows_per_candidate: 0
    approval_distribution_expected_tof: 6.0
    approval_distribution_cpu_ms: 3.0
    approval_voting_cpu_ms: 4.30
  n_validators: 500
  n_cores: 100
  n_included_candidates: 100
  min_pov_size: 1120
  max_pov_size: 5120
  peer_bandwidth: 524288000000
  bandwidth: 524288000000
  latency:
    min_latency:
      secs: 0
      nanos: 1000000
    max_latency:
      secs: 0
      nanos: 100000000
  error: 0
  num_blocks: 10
```

## The approach
1. We build a real overseer with the real implementations for
approval-voting and approval-distribution subsystems.
2. For a given network size, for each validator we pre-computed all
potential assignments and approvals it would send, because this a
computation heavy operation this will be cached on a file on disk and be
re-used if the generation parameters don't change.
3. The messages will be sent accordingly to the configured parameters
and those are split into 3 main benchmarking scenarios.

## Benchmarking scenarios

### Best case scenario *approvals_throughput_best_case.yaml*
It send to the approval-distribution only the minimum required tranche
to gathered the needed_approvals, so that a candidate is approved.

### Behaviour in the presence of no-shows *approvals_no_shows.yaml*
It sends the tranche needed to approve a candidate when we have a
maximum of *num_no_shows_per_candidate* tranches with no-shows for each
candidate.

### Maximum throughput *approvals_throughput.yaml*
It sends all the tranches for each block and measures the used CPU and
necessary network bandwidth. by the approval-voting and
approval-distribution subsystem.

## How to run it
```
cargo run -p polkadot-subsystem-bench --release -- test-sequence --path polkadot/node/subsystem-bench/examples/approvals_throughput.yaml
```

## Evaluating performance
### Use the real subsystems metrics
If you follow the steps in
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/tree/master/polkadot/node/subsystem-bench#install-grafana
for installing locally prometheus and grafana, all real metrics for the
`approval-distribution`, `approval-voting` and overseer are available.
E.g:
<img width="2149" alt="Screenshot 2023-12-05 at 11 07 46"
src="https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/assets/49718502/cb8ae2dd-178b-4922-bfa4-dc37e572ed38">

<img width="2551" alt="Screenshot 2023-12-05 at 11 09 42"
src="https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/assets/49718502/8b4542ba-88b9-46f9-9b70-cc345366081b">

<img width="2154" alt="Screenshot 2023-12-05 at 11 10 15"
src="https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/assets/49718502/b8874d8d-632e-443a-9840-14ad8e90c54f">

<img width="2535" alt="Screenshot 2023-12-05 at 11 10 52"
src="https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/assets/49718502/779a439f-fd18-4985-bb80-85d5afad78e2">

### Profile with pyroscope
1. Setup pyroscope following the steps in
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/tree/master/polkadot/node/subsystem-bench#install-pyroscope,
then run any of the benchmark scenario with `--profile` as the
arguments.
2. Open the pyroscope dashboard in grafana, e.g:
<img width="2544" alt="Screenshot 2024-01-09 at 17 09 58"
src="https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/assets/49718502/58f50c99-a910-4d20-951a-8b16639303d9">



### Useful  logs
1. Network bandwidth requirements:
```
Payload bytes received from peers: 503993 KiB total, 50399 KiB/block
Payload bytes sent to peers: 629971 KiB total, 62997 KiB/block
```

2. Cpu usage by the approval-distribution/approval-voting subsystems.
```
approval-distribution CPU usage 84.061s
approval-distribution CPU usage per block 8.406s
approval-voting CPU usage 96.532s
approval-voting CPU usage per block 9.653s
```

3. Time passed until a given block is approved
```
 Chain selection approved  after 3500 ms hash=0x0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101
Chain selection approved  after 4500 ms hash=0x0202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202020202
```

### Using benchmark to quantify improvements from
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/1178 +
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/1191

Using a versi-node we compare the scenarios where all new optimisations
are disabled with a scenarios where tranche0 assignments are sent in a
single message and a conservative simulation where the coalescing of
approvals gives us just 50% reduction in the number of messages we send.

Overall, what we see is a speedup of around 30-40% in the time it takes
to process the necessary messages and a 30-40% reduction in the
necessary bandwidth.

#### Best case scenario comparison(minimum required tranches sent).
Unoptimised
```
    Number of blocks: 10
    Payload bytes received from peers: 53289 KiB total, 5328 KiB/block
    Payload bytes sent to peers: 52489 KiB total, 5248 KiB/block
    approval-distribution CPU usage 6.732s
    approval-distribution CPU usage per block 0.673s
    approval-voting CPU usage 9.523s
    approval-voting CPU usage per block 0.952s
```

vs Optimisation enabled
```
   Number of blocks: 10
   Payload bytes received from peers: 32141 KiB total, 3214 KiB/block
   Payload bytes sent to peers: 37314 KiB total, 3731 KiB/block
   approval-distribution CPU usage 4.658s
   approval-distribution CPU usage per block 0.466s
   approval-voting CPU usage 6.236s
   approval-voting CPU usage per block 0.624s
```

#### Worst case all tranches sent, very unlikely happens when sharding
breaks.

Unoptimised
```
   Number of blocks: 10
   Payload bytes received from peers: 746393 KiB total, 74639 KiB/block
   Payload bytes sent to peers: 729151 KiB total, 72915 KiB/block
   approval-distribution CPU usage 118.681s
   approval-distribution CPU usage per block 11.868s
   approval-voting CPU usage 124.118s
   approval-voting CPU usage per block 12.412s
```

vs optimised
```
    Number of blocks: 10
    Payload bytes received from peers: 503993 KiB total, 50399 KiB/block
    Payload bytes sent to peers: 629971 KiB total, 62997 KiB/block
    approval-distribution CPU usage 84.061s
    approval-distribution CPU usage per block 8.406s
    approval-voting CPU usage 96.532s
    approval-voting CPU usage per block 9.653s
```


## TODOs
[x] Polish implementation.
[x] Use what we have so far to evaluate
https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/1191 before merging.
[x] List of features and additional dimensions we want to use for
benchmarking.
[x] Run benchmark on hardware similar with versi and kusama nodes.
[ ] Add benchmark to be run in CI for catching regression in
performance.
[ ] Rebase on latest changes for network emulation.

---------

Signed-off-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Alexandru Gheorghe <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Andrei Sandu <[email protected]>