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Unverified Commit 5153e2b5 authored by Tsvetomir Dimitrov's avatar Tsvetomir Dimitrov Committed by GitHub
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Collation fetching fairness (#4880)



Related to https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/1797

# The problem
When fetching collations in collator protocol/validator side we need to
ensure that each parachain has got a fair core time share depending on
its assignments in the claim queue. This means that the number of
collations fetched per parachain should ideally be equal to (but
definitely not bigger than) the number of claims for the particular
parachain in the claim queue.

# Why the current implementation is not good enough
The current implementation doesn't guarantee such fairness. For each
relay parent there is a `waiting_queue` (PerRelayParent -> Collations ->
waiting_queue) which holds any unfetched collations advertised to the
validator. The collations are fetched on first in first out principle
which means that if two parachains share a core and one of the
parachains is more aggressive it might starve the second parachain. How?
At each relay parent up to `max_candidate_depth` candidates are accepted
(enforced in `fn is_seconded_limit_reached`) so if one of the parachains
is quick enough to fill in the queue with its advertisements the
validator will never fetch anything from the rest of the parachains
despite they are scheduled. This doesn't mean that the aggressive
parachain will occupy all the core time (this is guaranteed by the
runtime) but it will deny the rest of the parachains sharing the same
core to have collations backed.

# How to fix it
The solution I am proposing is to limit fetches and advertisements based
on the state of the claim queue. At each relay parent the claim queue
for the core assigned to the validator is fetched. For each parachain a
fetch limit is calculated (equal to the number of entries in the claim
queue). Advertisements are not fetched for a parachain which has
exceeded its claims in the claim queue. This solves the problem with
aggressive parachains advertising too much collations.

The second part is in collation fetching logic. The collator will keep
track on which collations it has fetched so far. When a new collation
needs to be fetched instead of popping the first entry from the
`waiting_queue` the validator examines the claim queue and looks for the
earliest claim which hasn't got a corresponding fetch. This way the
collator will always try to prioritise the most urgent entries.

## How the 'fair share of coretime' for each parachain is determined?
Thanks to async backing we can accept more than one candidate per relay
parent (with some constraints). We also have got the claim queue which
gives us a hint which parachain will be scheduled next on each core. So
thanks to the claim queue we can determine the maximum number of claims
per parachain.

For example the claim queue is [A A A] at relay parent X so we know that
at relay parent X we can accept three candidates for parachain A. There
are two things to consider though:
1. If we accept more than one candidate at relay parent X we are
claiming the slot of a future relay parent. So accepting two candidates
for relay parent X means that we are claiming the slot at rp X+1 or rp
X+2.
2. At the same time the slot at relay parent X could have been claimed
by a previous relay parent(s). This means that we need to accept less
candidates at X or even no candidates.

There are a few cases worth considering:
1. Slot claimed by previous relay parent.
    CQ @ rp X: [A A A]
    Advertisements at X-1 for para A: 2
    Advertisements at X-2 for para A: 2
Outcome - at rp X we can accept only 1 advertisement since our slots
were already claimed.
2. Slot in our claim queue already claimed at future relay parent
    CQ @ rp X: [A A A]
    Advertisements at X+1 for para A: 1
    Advertisements at X+2 for para A: 1
Outcome: at rp X we can accept only 1 advertisement since the slots in
our relay parents were already claimed.

The situation becomes more complicated with multiple leaves (forks).
Imagine we have got a fork at rp X:
```
CQ @ rp X: [A A A]
(rp X) -> (rp X+1) -> rp(X+2)
         \-> (rp X+1')
```
Now when we examine the claim queue at RP X we need to consider both
forks. This means that accepting a candidate at X means that we should
have a slot for it in *BOTH* leaves. If for example there are three
candidates accepted at rp X+1' we can't accept any candidates at rp X
because there will be no slot for it in one of the leaves.

## How the claims are counted
There are two solutions for counting the claims at relay parent X:
1. Keep a state for the claim queue (number of claims and which of them
are claimed) and look it up when accepting a collation. With this
approach we need to keep the state up to date with each new
advertisement and each new leaf update.
2. Calculate the state of the claim queue on the fly at each
advertisement. This way we rebuild the state of the claim queue at each
advertisements.

Solution 1 is hard to implement with forks. There are too many variants
to keep track of (different state for each leaf) and at the same time we
might never need to use them. So I decided to go with option 2 -
building claim queue state on the fly.

To achieve this I've extended `View` from backing_implicit_view to keep
track of the outer leaves. I've also added a method which accepts a
relay parent and return all paths from an outer leaf to it. Let's call
it `paths_to_relay_parent`.

So how the counting works for relay parent X? First we examine the
number of seconded and pending advertisements (more on pending in a
second) from relay parent X to relay parent X-N (inclusive) where N is
the length of the claim queue. Then we use `paths_to_relay_parent` to
obtain all paths from outer leaves to relay parent X. We calculate the
claims at relay parents X+1 to X+N (inclusive) for each leaf and get the
maximum value. This way we guarantee that the candidate at rp X can be
included in each leaf. This is the state of the claim queue which we use
to decide if we can fetch one more advertisement at rp X or not.

## What is a pending advertisement
I mentioned that we count seconded and pending advertisements at relay
parent X. A pending advertisement is:
1. An advertisement which is being fetched right now.
2. An advertisement pending validation at backing subsystem.
3. An advertisement blocked for seconding by backing because we don't
know on of its parent heads.

Any of these is considered a 'pending fetch' and a slot for it is kept.
All of them are already tracked in `State`.

---------

Co-authored-by: default avatarMaciej <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: command-bot <>
Co-authored-by: default avatarAlin Dima <[email protected]>
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