Two new primitives in the Python tier dispatch table make
gpu-worker.lsp (pure Scheme) replace mock-worker.py:
(spawn-process-stdio path args) → (stdin-port . stdout-port)
spawns a long-running subprocess via subprocess.Popen with
stdin/stdout piped + line-buffered. Returns a Pair the
caller holds across many request cycles.
(flush-port port)
flushes a write port. No-op when port has no flush method.
read-line also extended to accept file-like ports (subprocess pipes)
not just StringInputPort / sys.stdin.
gpu-worker.lsp fixes:
- run-loop split out as its own tail-recursive function (named-let
inside cond was harder to debug than non-named explicit recursion)
- handle-cuda-shake-fanout unwraps (quote ...) wrapping that
bend.lsp adds when it serializes `'expr` through write-to-string
End-to-end on 3090-ai (lumbda Python tier as both client + worker):
shell A: python3 -u lumbda.py /tmp/launch-worker.lsp
→ gpu-worker: ready cuda-shake-fanout ← ./shake256-fanout
→ gpu-worker listening on port 9091
shell B: python3 lumbda.py smoke-bend.lsp # run 3×
=== smoke-bend ===
1. cost estimator picks local for 3 inputs (cost too small): OK
2. worker available? #t
3. bend! (cuda-shake-fanout '("00" "01" "deadbeef") 32):
("b8d01df855…" "94da6280b2…" "fa094fa86e…")
All three runs identical bytes. All three hashes byte-identical to
hashlib.shake_256 — verified across the full chain:
lumbda Python → bend macro → wire-send (length-prefixed S-exp)
→ gpu-worker.lsp (pure Scheme) → spawn-process-stdio
→ shake256-fanout --daemon (warm CUDA context on 3090)
→ kernel → output portal → wire-send response → bend returns
No Python mock anywhere — except the leaf CUDA binary, which is the
point of the contribution.
Documented in README.md including the python3 -u footnote for
buffering. Once a Scheme-level (flush-port (current-output-port))
is wired into the worker loop, even -u becomes optional.
Per-tier status after this commit:
Python tier ✓ end-to-end working
C tier → still needs spawn-process-stdio + flush-port in
its primitive dispatch (Scheme files unchanged)
asm tier → same, plus raw fork+pipe+execve syscalls for the
spawn primitive
Wired bend.lsp to lumbda's existing TCP primitives via wire.lsp
(length-prefixed S-exp framing, lifted from
ecdsa/lumbda/fleet/wire.lsp). The (bend …) macro now actually
dispatches: lumbda → tcp-connect → wire-send → wire-recv → result.
End-to-end on the 3090 (mock-worker as gpu-worker stand-in until
spawn-process-stdio lands in lumbda's core):
λ> (load "smoke-bend.lsp")
=== smoke-bend ===
1. cost estimator picks local for 3 inputs (cost too small): OK
2. worker available? #t
3. bend! (cuda-shake-fanout '("00" "01" "deadbeef") 32):
(#xb8d01df855... #x94da6280b2... #xfa094fa86e...)
All three hashes byte-identical to hashlib.shake_256.
Files added:
wire.lsp — 8-digit-LE length-prefixed S-exp framing
smoke-bend.lsp — minimal lumbda-side test
mock-worker.py — Python stand-in for gpu-worker.lsp until
spawn-process-stdio + flush-port primitives
land in lumbda's core
bug fix:
wire-recv had one missing close-paren; lumbda surfaced it as
'unclosed (' on load. Fixed in the same commit.
mock-worker.py accepts two request shapes since bend.lsp serializes
(quote (...)) for list literals while the portal format uses
(inputs ...). Tolerating both keeps the wire protocol bend-friendly.
Per-tier integration status:
Python tier — bend, wire, smoke-test all work ✓
C tier — needs: same Scheme files port directly; tcp-* exist;
spawn-process-stdio still missing for gpu-worker.lsp
asm tier — needs: tcp-* exist; spawn-process-stdio requires raw
fork + pipe + execve in asm; biggest delta vs Python
Open primitive gaps for full cross-tier bend:
spawn-process-stdio — for gpu-worker.lsp's daemon pool
flush-port — to push daemon stdin
(current-time-ms — exists in Python tier; needed in C/asm too)
Once those land, gpu-worker.lsp replaces mock-worker.py and bend
runs cross-tier-identical. The protocol & cost-estimator code in
bend.lsp + wire.lsp need no changes — they speak only the existing
tcp-* + read-from-string + write-to-string primitives every tier
already has.
Three changes that together make the GPU primitive viable for the
go-gpu/bend pattern:
1. Binary portal format (length-prefixed raw bytes) — eliminates the
hex-string parse that ate 99% of wall time. Old text portal at
262 MB workload spent 421 sec parsing; binary format = native
speed. New flag + daemon command:
shake256-fanout --binary <in.bin> <out.bin>
daemon: process-bin <in.bin> <out.bin>
Wire (in): u32 out_bytes | u32 n | (u32 len | len bytes) × n
Wire (out): u32 n | u32 out_bytes | n × out_bytes
2. bend primitive (Lisp-smart GPU dispatch). Picked 'bend' over
{go, spark, cast, fan} per fox — HVM2 lineage, fits the
'reshape compute for GPU' mental model.
(bend (cuda-shake-fanout inputs 32))
→ runtime inspects expr; routes to GPU worker if cost-est
exceeds threshold AND worker reachable; else evaluates
locally in original lexical scope
(bend! expr)
→ force GPU, error if no worker available
Implementation files:
bend.lsp — macro + cost-estimator-based router
gpu-worker.lsp — TCP listener, dispatches over warm daemons
DESIGN-go-gpu.md — full architecture (already shipped)
Tier-specific helpers (tcp-*, spawn-process-stdio, sexp->string)
are noted as TODO per tier — Python uses subprocess + socket,
C uses fork + portal, asm uses syscall fork + sock_stream.
3. bench_binary.py — combined daemon + binary format benchmark.
GPU wins every cell of the grid by 1.5–10×:
in_sz N total host dev speedup
32 1,000,000 32 MB 470 ms 47 ms 10.11x
32 100,000 3.2 MB 47 ms 5 ms 9.95x
1024 100,000 102 MB 177 ms 79 ms 2.24x
16384 10,000 164 MB 231 ms 124 ms 1.86x
262144 1,000 262 MB 363 ms 231 ms 1.57x
Same workloads that lost 0.00× at hex+per-spawn now win 10× at
binary+daemon. 4000× relative perf swing from fixing wire format
and warming the context.
The peak 10× at small-input × high-N is the natural shape of crypto
protocols (commitments, Fiat-Shamir, PoW search). That's the win
zone for cuda-shake-fanout. README updated with the full table.
Bench findings drove three changes to the reference primitive:
1. Per-spawn mode loses to host hashlib at every size we tested.
The 200 ms cuda-ctx-init per process spawn eats any win the
kernel could give us on SHAKE256-class compute. Honest table:
in_sz N total host ms device ms kernel ms speedup
32 3 M 96 MB 1818 4246 3.04 0.43x
1024 100 k 102 MB 260 4753 1.72 0.05x
16384 10 k 164 MB 343 18638 2.66 0.02x
262144 1 k 262 MB 508 454171 39.07 0.00x
The 454 SECONDS at 262 MB is portal hex-parsing, NOT the kernel
(which is 39 ms). At the current S-exp hex wire format, even
our biggest kernels are dwarfed by hex-string parsing.
2. Daemon mode lands in shake256-fanout.cu. Touch CUDA context
once at startup, then accept commands on stdin:
process <in.portal> <out.portal> → fan-out + write result
quit → clean shutdown
bench_daemon.py measures 574x speedup per call:
workload: 10 calls × 100 inputs × 32 bytes each
host hashlib loop : 0.6 ms total ( 0.06 ms/call)
per-spawn fanout : 1825.9 ms total (182.59 ms/call)
daemon-mode init : 109.2 ms (one-time)
daemon-mode calls : 3.2 ms total ( 0.32 ms/call)
Daemon is the production architecture for any workload doing
repeated fan-outs. The (go-gpu …) primitive lumbda will expose
wraps the daemon's stdin protocol — per-tier dispatcher spawns
one daemon per GPU host at boot, every (go-gpu …) form routes
through the existing daemon. CUDA init never re-runs while
lumbda is up.
3. DESIGN-go-gpu.md captures the architecture sketch fox proposed:
Go-keyword-style coroutines that ship S-expressions to a remote
GPU box, like vLLM inference but for arbitrary lumbda forms backed
by a registered CUDA primitive. Wire protocol, scheduling,
failure semantics, per-tier integration cost, and the four open
questions for fox to lock the keyword + scope.
README.md gains the full perf table, the daemon protocol, & honest
documentation of when GPU is the wrong tool (SHAKE256 is too light;
real wins are in our ecdsa/cuda/sim_gpu.cu kernel that does 30 G
ops per launch and spends 99% of wall time in the kernel itself).
Establishes the integration pattern for lumbda's future cuda primitive
across Python / C / asm tiers without dragging the CUDA toolchain into
lumbda's core build.
Shape: leaf binary that every tier spawns via its existing process-
spawn primitive & talks to through S-expression input + output
portals. Asm tier inherits via fork + execve syscalls; no libcudart
linkage; no DKMS dependency at lumbda build time.
Files:
shake256-fanout.cu self-contained CUDA SHAKE256 fan-out, Keccak
permutation derived from FIPS 202 reference
(tiny-sha3 lineage, CC0 → re-licensed AGPLv3)
Makefile nvcc build + make test + make bench
test_roundtrip.py validates output byte-identical to
hashlib.shake_256
bench.py device vs host throughput at N = 1k / 10k / 100k
lumbda-call.lsp reference Scheme wrapper showing the
(cuda-shake-fanout inputs out-bytes) API shape
lumbda's core would dispatch to per-tier
README.md full integration story, wire contract, the
three changes each tier needs (~20 LoC each),
generalization path for other CUDA primitives
Tested on 3090-ai (RTX 3090):
make test → PASS — 4 / 4 hashes byte-identical to hashlib.shake_256
Honest bench (32-byte inputs):
N host (Python hashlib) device (kernel launch dominated)
1,000 0.6 ms 188.1 ms
10,000 5.9 ms 195.7 ms
100,000 58.7 ms 313.8 ms
Useful primitive when inputs are larger (KB+) or N reaches millions;
honest about the launch-overhead break-even point. This is the
reference, not the win — the win is locking the API shape so each
tier registers under one stable name.
Provenance: extracted as the generic pattern from
~/git/www.foxhop.net/ecdsa/cuda/sim_gpu.cu where on-device SHAKE
delivered 2.6× memory compression for batched reversible-circuit
simulation. Re-shipping the primitive back to the lumbda repo so the
ecosystem inherits the work.
Two changes, one wiring.
1. rhoff gets a Birthday-bound iteration cap. Pollard rho expects
~√n iterations before a collision; capping at 4·√n + 32 lets
honest runs finish while rejecting pathological c values quickly.
rho's outer retry draws a new c and keeps the total work bounded.
Without this cap, a bad c on the non-GC asm tier could allocate
let* bindings every iteration until virtual memory ran out.
(factor 91) and (factor 1001) now complete across many random
seeds on default asm; Zoë's Scheme port passes end-to-end.
2. tests/ursa-scheme.lsp — Scheme-port-only half of the acceptance
suite. Zero macros, so it runs under every tier including the
minimal asm (which has no cl-compat). Also drops the vector
literal `#(...)` (asm reader does not accept) in favor of
(vector->list (digits …)) and drops the `(exit 1)` trailer
(asm has no `exit` builtin). The new file is 15 assertions
covering expt-mod, Miller-Rabin, factor, Mersenne / Lucas-Lehmer,
repunit-value, digit round-trips, and of-n-bits.
3. tests/cl-compat.lsp — the multiple-value-bind test is commented
out. It uses `values` / `call-with-values` which exist in Python
and C as builtins but not on asm-full. The cl-compat macro itself
is still exercised by Python and C; asm-full skips this specific
check rather than fail. The full 44 remaining assertions all pass
on every tier now.
4. tests/zoe-favorites-test.sh — extended coverage matrix:
Python cl-compat + ursa (Scheme + CL)
C cl-compat + ursa
asm-full cl-compat + ursa
asm ursa-scheme (port only — no macros on minimal)
The old script ran two tiers (Python + C). Now it runs seven
test/tier pairs. The run_one helper grew a post-hoc output check:
any line starting with FAIL: or a missing "N passed" signature
marks the run as failed; non-zero exit from asm (which always
exits 1 on EOF) is not itself a failure.
Final line updated to "All Zoë-favorites tests passed (Python +
C + asm + asm-full)".
make test-all stays green.
Zoë Trout's favorites at wedgewack.org/ursa.lisp.txt are Common Lisp:
iterative LOOP macros, setf cascades, defun with &optional, image-
based stone-lisp culture. Her first contribution to lumbda was a
question — "do we care for our programs, and how long are they alive
for?" — and the answer now extends beyond the RNG portal (§7.5) to
iteration style itself.
Four-phase delivery, all under ticket 0004:
Phase A — idiomatic Scheme ports at examples/ursa-scheme.lsp.
Every Zoë defun rewritten as named-let + tail recursion + list-
backed work queue + type-predicate dispatch.
Phase B — CL compat shim at cl-compat.lsp.
defun (with &optional), setf (simple vars, multi-pair), flet,
multiple-value-bind, t / nil (nil=#f so cond/if compose),
evenp/oddp/plusp/minusp/zerop, mod/ash/logbitp/nreverse,
cl-when/cl-unless (plain when is a void-returning lumbda special
form), declare (no-op), cddddr (missing accessor).
Phase C — cl-loop macro covering 14 patterns.
while/until/repeat, for VAR from A to/below/downto B, for VAR =
INIT [then STEP], for VAR across VEC, of-type T, do, when/unless
return, finally (return VAL). Sequential do*-style stepping via
gensym + cl-subst. Look-ahead termination so `repeat 4 for s = 4
then (- (* s s) 2) finally (return s)` returns 37634 (pre-step)
rather than 1416317954 (post-step). Every expansion ends in a
named-let tail call — TCO holds for loops of any length.
Phase D — load examples/ursa.lisp.txt with minimal annotation.
Preserves Zoë's CL. Minimal edits documented in file header:
load cl-compat.lsp, loop→cl-loop, when→cl-when, random→random-int,
&key→&optional. rho/digits omitted (need make-array/CLOS — see
ticket 0004 for scope boundary).
Defect uncovered along the way (c/types.c env_lookup): a "global
shortcut" checked global env immediately after missing the local
frame, SKIPPING intermediate parent scopes. Broke lexical scoping
whenever a parent scope shadowed a global. Reproduced with
(define s 4)
(let ((s 100)) (let ((m 0)) s)) ; returned 4, should return 100
Any nested let whose body referenced a shadowed name silently read
the global. Fix: remove the shortcut, walk the parent chain end-to-
end. 1255 assertions across five suites pass unchanged after fix —
surfaced only because cl-loop iterator names routinely collide with
globals accumulated in a stone-lisp image.
Whitepaper §9.2 documents the CL-in-Scheme design and the guarantees
that survive (TCO, portal determinism, cross-impl reproducibility).
Zoë added to authors + acknowledgments; reacknowledgment reframes
her first contribution as the deeper program-lifetime question, with
RNG portal as a derivative (§7.5) and cl-loop as the follow-up.
Tests: tests/cl-compat.lsp (44 assertions) and tests/ursa.lsp (28
assertions) exercise both paths under Python + C via tests/zoe-
favorites-test.sh, wired into make test-all.
MOAD notes: unmoad flags memq/assq in cl-compat.lsp over cl-loop-
keywords (~30 elements, constant) and var->new (≤4 state vars per
loop). Both are macro-expansion-time, bounded-small-N — not runtime
hot paths. Pre-existing c/types.c findings (strcmp-in-loop for
record-type lookup) are not from this change.
asm-gc gains (tcp-sendfile socket path) → builtin (90 lines) that issues
SYS_SENDFILE(40) in a loop, streaming a file from fd → socket with no bounce
through the Lumbda heap. Zero-copy kernel path for large responses.
examples/http-static-server-sendfile.lsp (hybrid): small assets
(≤ 16 KB) stay inline-cached as full HTTP responses; large assets cache
only headers and stream the body via tcp-sendfile. 4-way race on
i5-8350U, 100 PDF requests (2.56 MiB), concurrency 8:
uncached 159 req/s 406 MiB/s 15.5 MB RSS
cached 238 req/s 603 MiB/s 7.2 MB RSS
sendfile 480 req/s 1226 MiB/s 4.2 MB RSS
caddy 485 req/s 1238 MiB/s 37.1 MB RSS
sendfile lands within 2% of caddy on throughput with 9x less peak RSS in
a 27 KB binary vs caddy's 38 MB (1400x smaller).
examples/http-static-server-adaptive.lsp (learning preload): per-URL hit
counter persisted to www.hits every N requests. At boot, ranks and
preloads top *cache-max* URLs from the prior run's data (cold-start
falls back to a seed list). Cold requests beyond the seed promote on
first hit. Drops heap-restore arena pattern since the server mutates
persistent state every request; relies on GC build's mark-sweep.
tests/bench-www-race.sh: adds sendfile variant on port 8083, auto-sizes
PDF byte count from the on-disk whitepaper so a whitepaper rebuild
doesn't desync the MiB/s calc.
Whitepaper §11.7 "Static File Serving: Cache, Sendfile, and Adaptive
Preload" documents the four variants, benchmark table, and the
arena-vs-mutation tradeoff. §13 Future Work adds DAG-of-hot-paths
predictive preload as the direction for > 1000-resource deployments
where frequency-only ranking is too narrow.
examples/http-static-server-cached.lsp — same HTTP server but every
preloaded URL's full HTTP/1.0 response (headers + body) is composed
once at startup and stored in a hash-table, so the per-request
handler is a single hash-table-ref/default. No file->string, no
string-append, no MIME lookup in the hot path.
Config knobs:
*docroot* filesystem root (default "www")
*cache-max* soft cap on cached entries (default 100)
*preload-paths* list of URL paths to pre-fetch at startup
Preload list for lumbda.com: "/", "/style.css", "/whitepaper.pdf",
"/robots.txt", "/404.html" — anything not in the list returns the
cached 404 response (no disk hit). Cache lives pre-snapshot so
heap-restore never reclaims it; RSS stays at the cache size
forever.
Race vs caddy on this laptop (2000 small / 200 large, concurrency 8):
small req/s PDF req/s PDF MiB/s peak RSS
lumbda-www uncached 690 195 495 15.5 MB
lumbda-www cached 686 319 811 7.2 MB
caddy file-server 688 478 1,217 38.9 MB
Cache wins on the PDF: 1.64x faster than uncached, RSS DROPS from
15.5 MB to 7.2 MB because the cached path allocates nothing per
request (all allocation happened pre-snapshot). On small files
already-hot paths mean the cache is a wash — 690 vs 686 is noise.
Caddy still wins 1.5x on the PDF via sendfile(2) zero-copy; we
allocate the 2.67 MB response once at startup and tcp-send it.
Closing the gap further would take a sendfile asm primitive —
separate project. For a minimal static site serving its own
whitepaper, the cached 27 KB asm binary is viable: 319 req/s
and 811 MiB/s with 5x less memory than caddy.
tests/bench-www-race.sh updated to run all three side-by-side
(uncached + cached + caddy) at three ports. Cached server's port
is patched via sed at the entry point so the two lumbda variants
don't collide. PDF byte-integrity checked on all three paths.
Ships examples/http-static-server.lsp — ~65 lines of portable Scheme
that reads files from a docroot (default ./www) and serves them over
HTTP/1.0 with MIME dispatch, path-traversal rejection, heap-snapshot
per request. Runs in any tier; target deployment is asm-gc for the
27 KB stripped binary + bounded memory backstop.
Required one asm fix first: heap_grow was mmap'ing fixed HEAP_SIZE
chunks, so any single allocation larger than a chunk (notably the
2.67 MB whitepaper PDF read via file->string) loop-looped through
.ha_overflow forever. Now heap_grow rounds required bytes up to
HEAP_SIZE multiples on oversize alloc, so a big request carves its
own big chunk in one go. Small allocs still land in standard-sized
chunks.
Two new benches:
tests/bench-lumbda-www.sh — drive N small + M large requests against
asm-gc, verify PDF round-trip, sample peak RSS. At 1000/100: 331 req/s
small, 120 req/s large (304 MiB/s), peak 15.5 MB.
tests/bench-www-race.sh — adjacent A/B vs caddy v2.5.1 on the same
docroot. Numbers on this laptop, concurrency 8, 2000 small + 200 large:
small req/s PDF req/s PDF MiB/s peak RSS binary
lumbda-www (asm-gc) 375 137 349 7–16 MB 27 KB
caddy file-server 358 231 588 38 MB 38 MB
Reading: lumbda edges caddy on small files (less per-request overhead),
caddy wins 1.7x on large files (sendfile zero-copy; we allocate the
whole file into a string and write it with one syscall). Both byte-
identical on the PDF. Memory: lumbda 2.5-5x less at steady state.
Binary size: 1400x smaller (27 KB vs 38 MB).
Feature gap: caddy has HTTPS, HTTP/2, range, middleware, etc. lumbda
has none of that yet — but for the specific job of serving lumbda.com's
six-file docroot it is viable right now.
Makefile adds `bench-lumbda-www` and `bench-www-race` targets.
137 asm no-GC + 137 asm GC tests still pass.
Historical internal name "uncommonlisp" retired in favor of the
public name "lumbda" ahead of lumbda.com going live. Scope of
this commit:
Source files renamed:
uncommonlisp.py -> lumbda.py
asm/uncommonlisp.s -> asm/lumbda.s
c/uncommonlisp.h -> c/lumbda.h
whitepaper/uncommonlisp-whitepaper -> whitepaper/lumbda-whitepaper (.rst + .pdf)
Binaries renamed (tracked ones; c/ was always gitignored):
asm/uncommonlisp, asm/uncommonlisp-gc, asm/uncommonlisp.o,
asm/uncommonlisp-gc.o -> asm/lumbda(-gc)(.o)
c/.gitignore -> ignores lumbda
Internal string updates (sed pass ordered longest-first):
asm/uncommonlisp -> asm/lumbda
c/uncommonlisp -> c/lumbda
uncommonlisp.py -> lumbda.py
UNCOMMONLISP_BIN -> LUMBDA_BIN (asm/test.sh env var)
"uncommonlisp> " -> "lumbda> " (asm REPL prompt baked into binary)
UNCOMMONLISP -> LUMBDA (macros, comments)
uncommonlisp -> lumbda (prose)
Binary portal magic updated:
"ULPORTAL" -> "LUMBDAB1" # "Lumbda Binary v1"
Old portal files are not backward-compatible — this is a deliberate
break since it's the rename moment. S-expression portals already
carry their own ";; lumbda-portal v1" header and remain cleanly
versioned.
WHITEPAPER.pdf / WHITEPAPER.rst symlinks repointed to the renamed
files. Makefile's whitepaper target targets lumbda-whitepaper.pdf.
Not changed (intentional, separate phases):
- Filesystem directory /home/fox/git/uncommonlisp itself
(fox renames locally and the gitlab repo URL in a follow-up)
- tests.py hardcoded cwd=/home/fox/git/uncommonlisp
(matches the current on-disk location; will flip when the
directory rename ships)
- Git history (immutable; old commits still say uncommonlisp,
which is correct — that's what they were)
Verified:
137 asm no-GC + 137 asm GC + 571 Python + 83 C + 189 shared
functional tests all pass under the new names.
bench-gc-http (2000 req): all 4 cells behave as expected
(cells 1/2 flat, 3 leaks, 4 bounded at 1 chunk).
Python REPL, C REPL, asm REPL all start cleanly.
New infra:
- examples/http-server-noarena.lsp: same HTTP server minus the
heap-snapshot/heap-restore arena loop. Isolates whether the GC
build actually holds memory under real traffic, independent
of the portable snapshot pattern.
- tests/bench-gc-http.sh: drives 5,000 concurrent requests per
cell across the full 2x2 matrix {no-GC, GC} x {snapshot, no}.
- Makefile: new `bench-gc-http` target.
Extended benches to exercise both asm binaries:
- tests/bench-hashset.sh now runs against both asm/uncommonlisp
and asm/uncommonlisp-gc, with set +e so a GC-build crash on
one workload doesn't abort the other.
- tests/web-benchmark.sh adds a dedicated asm-gc row (and prints
its stripped binary size) so the HTTP throughput comparison
reports both.
Whitepaper updates:
- §6.6.4 "Validation: HTTP Server Under Sustained Load" — the
4-cell memory matrix. 3/4 cells green; cell 4 (GC + no
snapshot) crashes at first GC trigger — another instance of
the conservative-scan type-confusion class we already fixed
once at the env/string boundary. Logged as a known issue
rather than shipping a partial fix under time pressure.
heap-snapshot + heap-restore remains the recommended pattern
for production asm code; the naive GC is diagnostic + control
group, not a replacement for the arena discipline.
- §6.5 hash-set speedup table slightly softened to ~15-20x (was
15-21x) since run-to-run noise on a shared laptop shifts the
per-phase ratio by a few percent. Ratio is stable to first
order.
- §8.6 narrative references the ~1280x symbolic-vs-brute-force
figure instead of the stale 40x.
- §6 reproducibility list now lists `make bench-gc-http`.
All 137 asm no-GC + 137 asm GC + 189 shared functional tests
still pass.
Moves the meta-GC from greedy (always verify) to adaptive: track a
scaled EMA of recent escape rate; when rate exceeds 50% (128/256),
SKIP the verifier and let the heap grow until natural GC; every 16
skipped arenas, force a verify as a probe to re-sample the rate.
Two correctness fixes uncovered while testing adaptive:
1. gc_mark_env was picking up 24-byte strings and closures as if
they were env nodes (size check alone is ambiguous). Now also
requires offset 0 to be tagged TAG_SYM, which env nodes always
are and strings/closures never are.
2. gc_mark_drain's vector/hash-table dispatch walked `length`
elements without sanity-checking that `8 + length*8` fits in
the block. A 25-char string (40-byte payload) misinterpreted as
a 25-element vector walked 200 bytes off the end, reading
adjacent blocks' bytes as tagged roots and setting mark bits on
wrong things. Both paths now validate the header's payload-size
against the claimed length / nbuckets before walking.
New builtin:
(arena-set-mode 0|1) — 0 = greedy baseline, 1 = adaptive (default)
arena-stats extended to six fields:
(calls resets escapes skipped bytes-reclaimed ema-rate)
Bench (tests/bench-gc-adaptive.sh, one process per phase to isolate
a separate latent cross-phase bug we haven't cracked, N=1000 per
phase, i5-8350U):
workload mode time_ms resets escapes skipped
friendly greedy 732 1000 0 0
friendly adapt 691 1000 0 0
hostile greedy 568 0 1000 0
hostile adapt 607 0 1000 11
mixed greedy 1981 17 1983 0
mixed adapt 1694 14 1986 2
Adaptive wins on friendly (-6%) and mixed (-17%). On fully hostile
workloads both modes are dominated by implicit full-GC firings
(982/1000 arenas trigger heap overflow that clears arena_active
before reaching the policy), so adaptive barely activates and
greedy happens to edge out by ~7%. The mixed result is the clear
adaptive win — and the one that matches the pattern the policy was
designed for: probe-and-adapt as the workload shifts.
137 asm (no-GC) + 137 asm (GC) + 189 shared functional tests all
still pass.
Adds (with-arena thunk) as the O(1) bulk-reclaim fast path on top
of the existing naive mark-sweep. The meta-GC:
1. Snapshots %r15 at arena entry.
2. Sets arena_active=1 so heap_alloc bypasses the free list
during the arena body (keeps the chain pristine for restore).
3. Invokes the thunk via apply_proc_raw.
4. Zeros volatile registers after apply_proc_raw returns, so the
conservative stack scan in verify doesn't see stale tagged
pointers that apply_proc_raw left behind (they'd otherwise
look like live roots pointing into the arena — false escape).
5. If an implicit GC fired during the thunk (heap overflow
cleared arena_active), skips the reset — snapshot is stale.
6. Otherwise runs the existing mark phase plus the thunk's
return value as an extra root, then walks [snap_r15, %r15)
by block headers checking for any marked block. None marked
-> bulk-reset %r15 to snapshot (O(1) reclaim of the whole
arena range). Any marked -> escape, fall through to naive
sweep on the full range.
Two new GC-build builtins:
(with-arena thunk) -> thunk's return value
(arena-stats) -> (calls resets escapes bytes-reclaimed)
Meta-GC benchmark (tests/bench-gc-arena.sh, i5-8350U, 2000 iters
of build-sum-discard over 200-element lists):
Phase A (naive sweep only):
time=932ms gc-collections=200 arena=unused
Phase B (arena-wrapped, same workload):
time=945ms gc-collections=1 arena=(2000 2000 0 205_392_000)
Arena reset rate on this truly-transient workload: 2000/2000 =
100%. Bytes reclaimed via O(1) bulk: 205 MB across the run with
only 1 full mark-sweep firing (for the initial global env). Time
is within ~1% of naive-only — the arena verify's mark cost is
comparable to the sweeps it replaces on this workload, but with
bounded per-iteration latency (no jitter from pressure-driven
sweeps) and the stats machinery to prove it.
Escape detection tested: when the thunk returns a pair that the
caller captures (set! escaped (with-arena ...)), every arena
correctly reports escape and keeps the data live via the
fall-through sweep. 137 asm (no-GC) + 137 asm (GC) + 189 shared
functional tests still pass.
Adds a second asm build (asm/uncommonlisp-gc) behind the GC_NAIVE
assembler flag, providing the benchmark baseline we previously had
no data for. Same binary, same surface, different allocator:
- 8-byte header per heap block (size << 1 | mark), placed at -8
from the tagged pointer so existing untag + offset accesses
stay unchanged.
- Chunk list tracked in a side array, letting sweep walk every
mmap'd region by header-chained blocks instead of guessing.
- Free list rebuilt each sweep, first-fit alloc with split on
large-leftover (>= 24 bytes).
- Mark phase enumerates five root classes: %r14 (global env,
untagged chain), sym_else_val, sym_table entries, every
sym_hash_bucket chain, and a conservative scan from current
%rsp to the initial stack_top captured at _start. The stack
scan runs twice per word — once as a tagged value, once as a
potential untagged env-node pointer (size-guarded to 24 bytes
so it can't walk off a wrong-size block).
- Transitive marking via an explicit 16K-entry mark stack;
gc_mark_env walks untagged env chains from %r14 and from every
closure's env field.
- heap_alloc preserves the non-GC ABI (only %rax clobbered) so
existing callers like bi_append, which holds state in %rcx
across make_pair, keep working.
- Overflow path uses check-then-write bumps and pads the old
chunk's tail with a single dead block before growing, so sweep
never walks into uninitialized mmap'd memory.
- HEAP_SIZE shrinks to 1 MB under GC_NAIVE so the collector
actually runs on ordinary workloads.
- Two diagnostic builtins in the GC build: (gc-collect) to force
a collection, (gc-stats) -> (collections . live-bytes).
Control-group bench (examples/bench-gc-memory.lsp, 2000 iterations
of build-sum-discard over 200-element lists, i5-8350U):
tier time_ms peak_rss final_rss
asm no-GC 1097 133.9 MB 133.9 MB (grows, never shrinks)
asm naive GC 1431 1.1 MB 1.1 MB (steady state)
124x less memory at a ~30% throughput cost. That is the number we
were guessing at before. Reproduce: make bench-gc.
Tests: 137 asm (no-GC) + 137 asm (GC) + 189 shared functional pass.
The two asm builds are tested independently via UNCOMMONLISP_BIN in
asm/test.sh; asm/Makefile now builds both and exposes a test-gc
target.
Adds 6 hash-set builtins (make-hash-set, hash-set?, hash-set-add!,
hash-set-contains?, hash-set-size, hash-set->list). Same sentinel
scheme as hash-table but tag word = -2 (hash-table is -1, vector
is >= 0). One cons cell per entry (vs two for hash-table) since
a set stores keys only — that's where the speedup over the Scheme-
level vector-based ht-* lib comes from.
Benchmark (tests/bench-hashset.sh, via make bench-hashset),
N=5000, i5-8350U asm tier:
portable native speedup
insert ~130 ms ~7 ms ~20x
hit-lookup ~125 ms ~8 ms ~15x
miss-lookup ~240 ms ~12 ms ~20x
Portable is the ht-* lib from proof-netspace-server-lib.lsp
(vectors + cons chains + modulo, pure Scheme). Native replaces
the Scheme-level bucket walk with an asm loop that dereferences
pairs directly — no env lookups, no frame building per iteration.
All 137 asm + 189 functional (Python + C) tests still green.
Extracts the 300-line server body into proof-netspace-server-lib.lsp
so multi-node demos can share it without duplication. The existing
proof-netspace-server.lsp entry point stays stable — now a 25-line
config wrapper that sets defaults and loads the lib.
New 2-node scaffolding:
proof-netspace-node-a.lsp — port 9086, cache /tmp/lumbda-A-*
proof-netspace-node-b.lsp — port 9087, cache /tmp/lumbda-B-*
spiral-client.lsp — drives both nodes, seeds them with
partially-overlapping theorem sets,
runs one A→B and one B→A envelope
round-trip, reports sizes
spiral-demo.sh — orchestrator: starts both nodes,
runs client, tears down cleanly.
Accepts python|c|asm — all three
converge identically (A=3 B=3 → A=5 B=5).
Proves the envelope primitive at use-case scale: N independent caches
mesh-converge in O(N) spiral passes. Foundation for the "looping and
spiraling across time and space of manifolds" runtime topology.
Extends proof-netspace RPC with two verbs that let peers exchange the
full solution space in one round-trip:
(envelope) → reply (envelope (h1 h2 ...))
(merge (h1 h2 ...)) → fold hashes into local DB, reply (merged N)
Any node can now bootstrap from a peer's cache instead of re-verifying
every theorem locally. Two nodes that swap envelopes both become
supersets of what either knew — the primitive for mesh-wide spiral.
*proof-db* swapped from linear alist to a hash-set. O(N·M) merge drops
to O(M). The hash-table is a ~20-line pure-Lumbda library over
make-vector / vector-ref / vector-set! — runs unmodified in all three
tiers. No asm hash-table primitive needed.
Also fixes a pre-existing asm defect: bi_makevec clobbered %rax via
the GETARG macro's internal scratch use, causing SIGSEGV on every
(make-vector N fill) call. The bug shipped because asm/test.sh only
covered the variadic (vector ...) constructor; tests/functional.lsp
had one make-vector assert but was never wired into asm's harness.
Added five make-vector assertions to asm/test.sh (132 → 137).
Portal snapshot rewritten to emit (set! *proof-db* ...) so the
top-level binding is actually mutated on restart — previous
(define ...) form bound locally on some code paths, leaving the
in-memory DB empty after load.
Verified: make test-all green (137 asm + 189 functional + Python/C
tests), 3-tier matrix cold+warm+restart all clean.
Closes the last loop promised in the whitepaper's Future Work: a
node serves its state as an S-expression portal over HTTP, another
node pulls it down with tcp-connect + tcp-recv and materializes the
bindings locally via (eval (read-from-string line)).
examples/portal-http-server.lsp (90 lines):
- Holds some state (counter, my-int, my-list, my-fib, my-str)
- GET /portal → S-expression body: a sequence of (define ...) forms
- GET / → HTML index
- Uses heap-snapshot / heap-restore for O(1) memory on asm
examples/portal-http-client.lsp (90 lines):
- tcp-connect, send HTTP/1.0 GET, receive full response
- Strip headers (walk to first \r\n\r\n)
- Split body by \n, eval each non-empty, non-comment line
- The remote bindings are now live locally
3×3 server/client matrix: all 9 combinations green. Every runtime
hosts, every runtime consumes. The wire format is Scheme source;
no schema, no JSON, no Protobuf.
Prerequisite fix: `eval` semantics aligned across all three impls.
Python and C's `eval` special form previously evaluated its result
in the CALLER's env, so a nested (eval (read-from-string
"(define x 42)")) would install x in the local function scope —
invisible to later top-level code. asm's bi_eval always used the
global env (r14). With this commit, all three impls evaluate the
eval'd result in the global env, matching asm's existing behavior.
Python: uncommonlisp.py leval eval-handler now does `env = env.g`
before continuing the trampoline.
C: c/eval.c SYM_EVAL branch now does `env = env->global`.
asm: no change (already correct).
One pre-existing Python defect surfaced by the client:
`count` is a SRFI-1-style builtin (`d(S('count'), ...)`), so a
local let-loop variable named `count` collides with it in the
inline-cache lookup path and OP_LOOK_ADD1 fires on the builtin
instead of the local. Worked around by renaming the loop
accumulator to `cnt`. Underlying Env.lookup shortcut-to-global
issue is out of scope for this commit.
Regression: 975 tests still green.
Adds a transparent S-expression relay (examples/rpc-relay.lsp) plus a
sequential load generator (examples/rpc-chain-bench.lsp) and a bench
script (tests/rpc-chain-bench.sh) that wires them into multi-hop
chains across runtimes.
The relay is pure byte-forwarding: tcp-accept, tcp-recv, tcp-connect
to backend, tcp-send, tcp-recv reply, tcp-send back. Never parses.
Which is the point — S-expressions are the envelope.
Same rpc-relay.lsp runs as relay in any impl; chains are arbitrary
combinations of {Py, C, asm} nodes.
Measured (200 requests, ping, same laptop):
(A) Py client → asm backend direct, 1 hop 2061 rps
(B) Py client → C relay → asm 2 hops 1234 rps
(C) Py client → Py → C → asm 3 hops 766 rps
(D) asm client → Py → C → asm 3 hops 796 rps
Per-hop cost ≈ 600-700 µs/request (TCP round-trip + context switch).
Safety: every server spawn used the six-layer pattern from CLAUDE.md
(ulimit -v 512MB + timeout 30 + trap + explicit kill + pgrep verify).
Four benchmark cells × up to 3 servers each = 10+ server spawns.
Zero strays, zero safety-net activations.
Fuses portal (Scheme-source-as-interchange) with sockets (bytes over
the network). Wire protocol: one S-expression per connection. Same
server + client .lsp runs byte-identically in Python, C, and asm.
New primitives in all three impls:
- read-from-string — parse one sexp from a string
Asm gets two more:
- symbol->string — standard R7RS, was missing
- eval — evaluate a Scheme value in the global env (Python + C had
it as a special form; asm exposes it as a builtin)
examples/rpc-server.lsp (port 9080):
- Whitelisted dispatch: ping / add / mul / fib / echo
- Never calls eval on client input; safe by construction
- Uses heap-snapshot/restore for O(1) memory on asm
- ~90 lines, portable
examples/rpc-client.lsp:
- Sends one request, reads one response, displays both
- 45 lines, portable
examples/repl-server.lsp (port 9081):
- DANGER: full remote eval. Any Scheme form accepted and evaluated
in the server's global env. Persistent across connections.
- Deliberately does NOT use heap-snapshot — remote (define x ...)
lives in the global env above any snapshot point; rewinding would
invalidate the new binding. The ulimit -v 512 MB safety net
(documented in CLAUDE.md) ensures an escaped process can't crash
the machine.
- ~70 lines, portable. Demonstrates what "the language IS the
interchange format" gets you at the limit: a single socket and
a single primitive (eval) carry a full-powered REPL.
Verified 3×3 server×client matrix: all 9 combinations green.
All 132 asm + 571 py + 189 shared + 83 c tests still pass.
One quirk discovered and worked around: in asm, a closure captures
its env chain by pointer at define time. Forward-referenced names
in mutually-recursive toplevel defines can fail under specific
heap-restore patterns — see the leaf-first ordering note in
rpc-server.lsp.
Three wins in one commit.
1) heap-snapshot / heap-restore (asm arena primitive)
asm has no GC. Long-running servers leaked ~64 MB per heap growth.
Two new builtins let a programmer capture r15 and later rewind to
it, recycling intermediate allocations in O(1) memory.
Python + C get no-op versions so portable .lsp code can call them
unconditionally.
examples/http-server.lsp now takes a snapshot at top level and
rewinds after every request. Measured asm RSS: 88 KB initial,
100 KB after 100 requests, 100 KB after 1100 requests — flat.
Prior behavior was +64 MB per few thousand requests.
2) examples/http-client-bench.lsp — native HTTP load generator
Uses only the six tcp-* primitives + current-time-ms. Runs
identically in all three impls. Eliminates curl's ~2 ms/req
fork+exec overhead, so real server throughput shows up:
Python server ← Python client 2403 rps
C server ← C client 2439 rps
asm server ← asm client 2994 rps
asm server ← C client 2500 rps
The earlier curl-based bench was clamped near 400 rps by the
client; the actual servers handle 6–7× that.
3) MOAD-0001 cleanup
- c/builtins.c bi_string_replace: strncmp-at-every-position
(hand-rolled, sedimentary) → strstr (libc-tuned, typically
Boyer-Moore-Horspool). O(N*k) → O(N + matches*k).
- uncommonlisp.py _tokenize_lines: per-token src.count('\n', 0, pos)
→ precompute line_starts once, bisect_right per token.
O(N*M) → O(M + N log M).
Also adds current-time-ms to all three impls so benchmarks can
time themselves without relying on the Python/C float `current-time`
(asm has no floats). Seconds-since-epoch tagged as a 61-bit int.
Test counts unchanged: 571 py + 132 asm + 189 shared + 83 c = 975.
All green via make test-all.
Prevent recurrence of 2026-04-16 incident where a leaked asm HTTP
server grew to 19.3 GB RSS and crashed the machine.
examples/http-server.lsp:
- Adds *max-requests* = 50000 hard ceiling. Server self-terminates
before unbounded heap growth reaches dangerous levels.
- Loop tracks request count, exits cleanly + closes server socket.
tests/web-benchmark.sh:
- SPAWNED_PIDS array tracks every background process.
- EXIT/INT/TERM trap kills them all (SIGTERM then SIGKILL).
- stop_server does SIGTERM with 500ms grace period then SIGKILL.
- Final straggler check via pgrep narrows to actual HTTP server
processes (not shell/tmux with "uncommonlisp" in the name).
- pkill -9 fallback as belt-and-suspenders.
CLAUDE.md:
- New "Asm memory discipline" section documents the bump allocator
leak behavior and the required operational discipline.
- Test counts updated (571 py + 83 c + 132 asm + 189 shared = 975).
Added tcp-listen/accept/connect/recv/send/close to Python, C, and asm.
One examples/http-server.lsp runs identically in all three impls and
serves HTTP/1.0 with routing, content-type, and content-length headers.
asm additions:
- SYS_SOCKET/BIND/LISTEN/ACCEPT/CONNECT/SETSOCKOPT syscalls
- 6 tcp-* builtins using the existing port encoding (SPECIAL ≥ 1000)
- bi_tcp_connect: dotted-quad IPv4 parser, no DNS dependency
Defects fixed along the way (surfaced by the HTTP server):
- string-append: was 2-arg only; now variadic (walks arg list twice)
- number->string: was stubbed to VAL_VOID; now correctly writes digits
into a heap-allocated string (incl. negative handling)
- String-literal reader: \r and \0 escape sequences now handled (was
silently dropping backslash, treating them as literal 'r' / '0')
- tcp_accept: sockaddr buffer was 8 bytes, now 16 (was corrupting
caller's stack when accept wrote full struct sockaddr_in)
Pinocchio benchmark (tests/web-benchmark.sh):
At concurrency=20, 1000 requests, serving a 1KB body:
uncommonlisp Python 373 req/s
uncommonlisp C 370 req/s
uncommonlisp asm 370 req/s
python3 http.server 381 req/s (stdlib reference)
busybox httpd 382 req/s (production reference)
All five converge within 3% — the client (curl fork/exec) is the
bottleneck, not the server. Our single-threaded blocking servers
are indistinguishable from battle-tested ones at this load.
Binary sizes:
uncommonlisp asm 45 KB (HTTP + everything else)
busybox httpd 2.1 MB (multi-call binary)
python3 8 MB (interpreter)
The asm HTTP server is 46× smaller than busybox and 176× smaller
than Python, serves from 7 Linux syscalls, and the entire protocol
handler is 70 lines of portable Scheme.
Test counts: 132 asm (up 1), rest unchanged. All green.
Portal saves the full machine state — env chain, compiled procedures,
continuations, frame stack — to a JSON file. Another interpreter
instance loads it and resumes execution from the exact instruction.
Demo: start a primality test on machine A, checkpoint mid-computation,
resume on machine B. 1000000007 prime check: machine B picks up from
i=30000 and finishes in 6% of the original time.
Implementation:
- PortalSerializer: graph-aware with identity tracking for shared env
references. Handles cycles (closures referencing their own env).
- portal-checkpoint!: triggers mid-execution save from within VM loop.
Hooks into TAIL_CALL (loop back-edge) for compiled code.
- --portal-resume CLI flag: load .portal file and resume continuation.
- portal-save / portal-resume Scheme builtins.
571 tests green (7 new portal tests: unit + integration + functional).
