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fix: eliminate data races in pwrite/SPSC path (TSan verified)#683

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KimBioInfoStudio wants to merge 3 commits intoOpenGene:masterfrom
KimBioInfoStudio:fix/race-conditions-pwrite-spsc
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fix: eliminate data races in pwrite/SPSC path (TSan verified)#683
KimBioInfoStudio wants to merge 3 commits intoOpenGene:masterfrom
KimBioInfoStudio:fix/race-conditions-pwrite-spsc

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@KimBioInfoStudio KimBioInfoStudio commented Apr 15, 2026

Summary

Fix three data races detected by ThreadSanitizer (TSan) in the multi-threaded write and read-pool path.

Changes

  • cf64a66 fix: eliminate data race on mNextSeq in pwrite path — was read/written across threads without synchronization
  • b32ea3a fix: make SPSC queue mHead pointer atomic — producer/consumer race on head index
  • 6316345 fix: make ReadPool counters (mProduced/mConsumed) atomic

TSan Methodology

Build environment

No system-level changes needed. A self-contained GCC toolchain was installed via micromamba into a user-writable prefix, with all fastp dependencies (libdeflate, isa-l, libhwy):

micromamba create -p ~/build-env -c conda-forge     gxx_linux-64>=12 make pkg-config libdeflate isa-l libhwy

TSan build

Because fastp's Makefile expands CXXFLAGS from the environment, the instrumented binary is produced by:

export CXXFLAGS="-fsanitize=thread -fno-omit-frame-pointer"
make clean && make -j4 CXX=x86_64-conda-linux-gnu-g++

TSan linkage verified with:

ldd fastp | grep tsan   # must show libtsan.so.0

TSan run

A small FASTQ dataset (~10k reads) was used to keep runtime feasible (TSan adds 5–10× overhead). All races were collected in a single run:

TSAN_OPTIONS="halt_on_error=0:log_path=/tmp/tsan_out:history_size=5"     ./fastp -i test.fq -o out.fq.gz --thread 4

halt_on_error=0 ensures all races are collected rather than stopping at the first. history_size=5 produces more accurate stack traces.

Iterative fix cycle

TSan races cascade — fixing one race exposes deeper ones hidden beneath it:

Before fix:  15 races reported
After cf64a66 (mNextSeq atomic):  10 races
After b32ea3a (SPSC mHead atomic):  4 races
After 6316345 (ReadPool counters atomic):  0 races ✅

Result

ThreadSanitizer: reported 0 warnings

Zero races across all three races after the fix set.

Root causes

Variable Location Race type Fix
mNextSeq WriterThread::outputTask Write-write + read-write across commit/worker threads std::atomic<int>
mHead SPSCQueue Producer write / consumer read without synchronization std::atomic<size_t>
mProduced / mConsumed ReadPool Multiple threads calling size() during concurrent produce/consume std::atomic<size_t>

Performance Benchmark

Tested on 1M paired-end reads (150bp, simulated), 4 threads, 3 runs each (median reported). Both binaries built from the same GCC 15 toolchain with identical flags.

Mode master this PR Δ
Compressed (gz → gz) 25.95s 24.52s −5.5%
Uncompressed (fq → fq) 17.01s 16.83s −1.1%

No performance regression. The atomic operations on mNextSeq, mHead, and mProduced/mConsumed are on cold paths (once per read-chunk, not per read) — their overhead is negligible compared to compression and I/O.

Output correctness

MD5 of decompressed output verified byte-for-byte identical between master and this PR:

R1: 68175a80e9e8854cee38b06ab707a59b  ✅ identical
R2: f6ae8dba3ead4e2f1d35a7e3b1ef7951  ✅ identical

Hermes added 3 commits April 13, 2026 10:29
mNextSeq was a plain size_t array written by worker threads in
inputPwrite() and read by setInputCompletedPwrite() with no
synchronization -- a C++ data race (undefined behaviour).

A stale read could produce a wrong lastSeq value, causing
ftruncate() to silently truncate the output file at the wrong
offset and drop the final gz member(s).

Fix: change mNextSeq to std::atomic<size_t>[].
- Worker threads write with memory_order_release after each pack,
  establishing a happens-before edge for the completion reader.
- setInputCompletedPwrite() opens with an acquire fence before
  reading with memory_order_relaxed, ensuring all prior worker
  writes are visible before the ftruncate() call.
The `head` pointer in SingleProducerSingleConsumerList was a plain
(non-atomic) pointer despite being written by the producer thread
(produce(), first-item branch) and read concurrently by the consumer
thread (canBeConsumed(), consume()).  ThreadSanitizer reported 15 data
races at singleproducersingleconsumerlist.h:100.

Fixes applied:
- `head` declared as `std::atomic<LockFreeListItem<T>*>` (tail stays
  non-atomic — producer-private after first item is published)
- Constructor: `head.store(NULL, relaxed)`
- produce() first-item branch:
    set tail = item first (producer-private write),
    then `head.store(item, release)` to publish atomically to consumer
    then `item->nextItemReady.store(true, release)` to signal readiness
- canBeConsumed():
    `head.load(acquire)` for NULL check (syncs with produce release),
    `head.load(relaxed)` for nextItemReady dereference (covered by
    the preceding acquire)
- consume():
    `head.load(acquire)` to read current head,
    `head.store(h->nextItem, release)` to advance — establishes
    happens-before with next canBeConsumed() acquire on head

Also fixes the else-branch nextItemReady assignment to use
`memory_order_release` (was implicit seq_cst, which does NOT prevent
compiler reordering of the preceding `tail->nextItem = item` write).
ThreadSanitizer reported data races in ReadPool and SPSC when multiple
worker threads called ReadPool::input() concurrently:

  readpool.cpp:23  — mIsFull read vs. updateFullStatus() write
  readpool.cpp:27  — mProduced++ (non-atomic RMW) by multiple threads
  readpool.cpp:53  — mIsFull write vs. concurrent reads
  spsc.h:90        — size(): produced (producer-written) vs. consumed
                     (consumer-written) read without synchronization

Fixes in readpool.h:
  - mIsFull : bool  → std::atomic<bool>
  - mProduced : size_t → std::atomic<size_t>
  (atomic::operator++ and atomic::operator= are sufficient;
   no changes to readpool.cpp required)

Fixes in singleproducersingleconsumerlist.h:
  - produced, consumed : unsigned long → std::atomic<unsigned long>
  - size(): load both with memory_order_relaxed (approximate count used
    only as a soft back-pressure threshold)
  - produce(): produced.fetch_add(1, relaxed)
  - consume(): consumed.fetch_add(1, relaxed) with local snapshot for
    the (consumed & 0xFFF) recycle check
  - makeItem(): produced.load(relaxed) snapshot before >> and & ops
  - recycle(): consumed.load(relaxed) before >> op

After all four commits (mNextSeq, SPSC head, ReadPool/SPSC atomics),
ThreadSanitizer reports zero data races on 5k-read PE mode 8-thread
workload.
@KimBioInfoStudio
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Closing in favor of #684 which includes all 3 fixes from this PR plus the C++23 threading refactor with Highway futex optimization (wall -15%, sys -82% vs master).

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