lighthouse-pulse/testing/ef_tests
Michael Sproul 22115049ee Prioritise important parts of block processing (#3696)
## Issue Addressed

Closes https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse/issues/2327

## Proposed Changes

This is an extension of some ideas I implemented while working on `tree-states`:

- Cache the indexed attestations from blocks in the `ConsensusContext`. Previously we were re-computing them 3-4 times over.
- Clean up `import_block` by splitting each part into `import_block_XXX`.
- Move some stuff off hot paths, specifically:
  - Relocate non-essential tasks that were running between receiving the payload verification status and priming the early attester cache. These tasks are moved after the cache priming:
    - Attestation observation
    - Validator monitor updates
    - Slasher updates
    - Updating the shuffling cache
  - Fork choice attestation observation now happens at the end of block verification in parallel with payload verification (this seems to save 5-10ms).
  - Payload verification now happens _before_ advancing the pre-state and writing it to disk! States were previously being written eagerly and adding ~20-30ms in front of verifying the execution payload. State catchup also sometimes takes ~500ms if we get a cache miss and need to rebuild the tree hash cache.

The remaining task that's taking substantial time (~20ms) is importing the block to fork choice. I _think_ this is because of pull-tips, and we should be able to optimise it out with a clever total active balance cache in the state (which would be computed in parallel with payload verification). I've decided to leave that for future work though. For now it can be observed via the new `beacon_block_processing_post_exec_pre_attestable_seconds` metric.


Co-authored-by: Michael Sproul <micsproul@gmail.com>
2022-11-30 05:22:58 +00:00
..
src
tests
.gitignore
Cargo.toml
check_all_files_accessed.py
Makefile
README.md

Consensus Specification Tests

This crate parses and executes the test vectors at ethereum/consensus-spec-tests.

Functionality is achieved only via the $ cargo test --features ef_tests command.

Running the Tests

Because the test vectors are very large, we do not download or run them by default. To download them, run (in this directory):

$ make

Note: this may download hundreds of MB of compressed archives from the ethereum/consensus-spec-tests, which may expand into several GB of files.

If successful, you should now have the extracted tests in ./consensus-spec-tests.

Run them with:

$ cargo test --features ef_tests

The tests won't run without the ef_tests feature enabled (this is to ensure that a top-level cargo test --all won't fail on missing files).

Saving Space

When you download the tests, the downloaded archives will be kept in addition to the extracted files. You have several options for saving space:

  1. Delete the archives (make clean-archives), and keep the extracted files. Suitable for everyday use, just don't re-run make or it will redownload the archives.
  2. Delete the extracted files (make clean-test-files), and keep the archives. Suitable for CI, or temporarily saving space. If you re-run make it will extract the archives rather than redownloading them.
  3. Delete everything (make clean). Good for updating to a new version, or if you no longer wish to run the EF tests.