[Bioc-devel] writeVcf performance

Valerie Obenchain vobencha at fhcrc.org
Mon Sep 8 17:38:36 CEST 2014


The new writeVcf code is in 1.11.28.

Using the illumina file you suggested, geno fields only, writing now 
takes about 17 minutes.

 > hdr
class: VCFHeader
samples(1): NA12877
meta(6): fileformat ApplyRecalibration ... reference source
fixed(1): FILTER
info(22): AC AF ... culprit set
geno(8): GT GQX ... PL VF

 > param = ScanVcfParam(info=NA)
 > vcf = readVcf(fl, "", param=param)
 > dim(vcf)
[1] 51612762        1

 > system.time(writeVcf(vcf, "out.vcf"))
     user   system  elapsed
  971.032    6.568 1004.593

In 1.11.28, parsing of geno data was moved to C. If this didn't speed 
things up enough we were planning to implement 'chunking' through the 
VCF and/or move the parsing of info to C, however, it looks like geno 
was the bottleneck.

I've tested a number of samples/fields combinations in files with >= .5 
million rows and the improvement over writeVcf() in release is ~ 90%.

Valerie



On 09/04/14 15:28, Valerie Obenchain wrote:
> Thanks Gabe. I should have something for you on Monday.
>
> Val
>
>
> On 09/04/2014 01:56 PM, Gabe Becker wrote:
>> Val and Martin,
>>
>> Apologies for the delay.
>>
>> We realized that the Illumina platinum genome vcf files make a good test
>> case, assuming you strip out all the info (info=NA when reading it into
>> R) stuff.
>>
>> ftp://platgene:G3n3s4me@ussd-ftp.illumina.com/NA12877_S1.genome.vcf.gz
>> took about ~4.2 hrs to write out, and is about 1.5x the size of the
>> files we are actually dealing with (~50M ranges vs our ~30M).
>>
>> Looking forward a new vastly improved writeVcf :).
>>
>> ~G
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:53 PM, Michael Lawrence
>> <lawrence.michael at gene.com <mailto:lawrence.michael at gene.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Yes, it's very clear that the scaling is non-linear, and Gabe has
>>     been experimenting with a chunk-wise + parallel algorithm.
>>     Unfortunately there is some frustrating overhead with the
>>     parallelism. But I'm glad Val is arriving at something quicker.
>>
>>     Michael
>>
>>
>>     On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 1:33 PM, Martin Morgan <mtmorgan at fhcrc.org
>>     <mailto:mtmorgan at fhcrc.org>> wrote:
>>
>>         On 08/27/2014 11:56 AM, Gabe Becker wrote:
>>
>>             The profiling I attached in my previous email is for 24 geno
>>             fields, as I said,
>>             but our typical usecase involves only ~4-6 fields, and is
>>             faster but still on
>>             the order of dozens of minutes.
>>
>>
>>         I think Val is arriving at a (much) more efficient
>>         implementation, but...
>>
>>         I wanted to share my guess that the poor _scaling_ is because
>>         the garbage collector runs multiple times as the different
>>         strings are pasted together, and has to traverse, in linear
>>         time, increasing numbers of allocated SEXPs. So times scale
>>         approximately quadratically with the number of rows in the VCF
>>
>>         An efficiency is to reduce the number of SEXPs in play by
>>         writing out in chunks -- as each chunk is written, the SEXPs
>>         become available for collection and are re-used. Here's my toy
>>         example
>>
>>         time.R
>>         ======
>>         splitIndices <- function (nx, ncl)
>>         {
>>              i <- seq_len(nx)
>>              if (ncl == 0L)
>>                  list()
>>              else if (ncl == 1L || nx == 1L)
>>                  list(i)
>>              else {
>>                  fuzz <- min((nx - 1L)/1000, 0.4 * nx/ncl)
>>                  breaks <- seq(1 - fuzz, nx + fuzz, length = ncl + 1L)
>>                  structure(split(i, cut(i, breaks, labels=FALSE)), names
>>         = NULL)
>>              }
>>         }
>>
>>         x = as.character(seq_len(1e7)); y = sample(x)
>>         if (!is.na <http://is.na>(Sys.getenv("SPLIT", NA))) {
>>              idx <- splitIndices(length(x), 20)
>>              system.time(for (i in idx) paste(x[i], y[i], sep=":"))
>>         } else {
>>              system.time(paste(x, y, sep=":"))
>>         }
>>
>>
>>         running under R-devel with $ SPLIT=TRUE R --no-save --quiet -f
>>         time.R the relevant time is
>>
>>             user  system elapsed
>>           15.320   0.064  15.381
>>
>>         versus with $ R --no-save --quiet -f time.R it is
>>
>>             user  system elapsed
>>           95.360   0.164  95.511
>>
>>         I think this is likely an overall strategy when dealing with
>>         character data -- processing in independent chunks of moderate
>>         (1M?) size (enabling as a consequence parallel evaluation in
>>         modest memory) that are sufficient to benefit from
>>         vectorization, but that do not entail allocation of large
>>         numbers of in-use SEXPs.
>>
>>         Martin
>>
>>
>>             Sorry for the confusion.
>>             ~G
>>
>>
>>             On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 11:45 AM, Gabe Becker
>>             <beckerg4 at gene.com <mailto:beckerg4 at gene.com>
>>             <mailto:beckerg4 at gene.com <mailto:beckerg4 at gene.com>>> wrote:
>>
>>                  Martin and Val.
>>
>>                  I re-ran writeVcf on our (G)VCF data (34790518 ranges,
>>             24 geno fields) with
>>                  profiling enabled. The results of summaryRprof for that
>>             run are attached,
>>                  though for a variety of reasons they are pretty
>> misleading.
>>
>>                  It took over an hour to write (3700+seconds), so it's
>>             definitely a
>>                  bottleneck when the data get very large, even if it
>>             isn't for smaller data.
>>
>>                  Michael and I both think the culprit is all the pasting
>>             and cbinding that is
>>                  going on, and more to the point, that memory for an
>>             internal representation
>>                  to be written out is allocated at all.  Streaming
>>             across the object, looping
>>                  by rows and writing directly to file (e.g. from C)
>>             should be blisteringly
>>                  fast in comparison.
>>
>>                  ~G
>>
>>
>>                  On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Michael Lawrence
>>             <michafla at gene.com <mailto:michafla at gene.com>
>>                  <mailto:michafla at gene.com <mailto:michafla at gene.com>>>
>>             wrote:
>>
>>                      Gabe is still testing/profiling, but we'll send
>>             something randomized
>>                      along eventually.
>>
>>
>>                      On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Martin Morgan
>>             <mtmorgan at fhcrc.org <mailto:mtmorgan at fhcrc.org>
>>                      <mailto:mtmorgan at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:mtmorgan at fhcrc.org>>> wrote:
>>
>>                          I didn't see in the original thread a
>>             reproducible (simulated, I
>>                          guess) example, to be explicit about what the
>>             problem is??
>>
>>                          Martin
>>
>>
>>                          On 08/26/2014 10:47 AM, Michael Lawrence wrote:
>>
>>                              My understanding is that the heap
>>             optimization provided marginal
>>                              gains, and
>>                              that we need to think harder about how to
>>             optimize the all of
>>                              the string
>>                              manipulation in writeVcf. We either need to
>>             reduce it or reduce its
>>                              overhead (i.e., the CHARSXP allocation).
>>             Gabe is doing more tests.
>>
>>
>>                              On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Valerie
>>             Obenchain
>>                              <vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org> <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org>>>
>>
>>                              wrote:
>>
>>                                  Hi Gabe,
>>
>>                                  Martin responded, and so did Michael,
>>
>>
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/____pipermail/bioc-devel/2014-____August/006082.html
>>
>> <https://stat.ethz.ch/__pipermail/bioc-devel/2014-__August/006082.html>
>>
>>
>>
>> <https://stat.ethz.ch/__pipermail/bioc-devel/2014-__August/006082.html
>>
>> <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioc-devel/2014-August/006082.html>>
>>
>>                                  It sounded like Michael was ok with
>>             working with/around heap
>>                                  initialization.
>>
>>                                  Michael, is that right or should we
>>             still consider this on
>>                                  the table?
>>
>>
>>                                  Val
>>
>>
>>                                  On 08/26/2014 09:34 AM, Gabe Becker
>> wrote:
>>
>>                                      Val,
>>
>>                                      Has there been any movement on
>>             this? This remains a
>>                                      substantial
>>                                      bottleneck for us when writing very
>>             large VCF files (e.g.
>>                                      variants+genotypes for whole genome
>>             NGS samples).
>>
>>                                      I was able to see a ~25% speedup
>>             with 4 cores and  an
>>                                      "optimal" speedup
>>                                      of ~2x with 10-12 cores for a VCF
>>             with 500k rows  using
>>                                      a very naive
>>                                      parallelization strategy and no
>>             other changes. I suspect
>>                                      this could be
>>                                      improved on quite a bit, or
>>             possibly made irrelevant
>>                                      with judicious use
>>                                      of serial C code.
>>
>>                                      Did you and Martin make any plans
>>             regarding optimizing
>>                                      writeVcf?
>>
>>                                      Best
>>                                      ~G
>>
>>
>>                                      On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 2:33 PM,
>>             Valerie Obenchain
>>                                      <vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org> <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org>>
>>                                      <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org> <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org
>>             <mailto:vobencha at fhcrc.org>>>>
>>
>>                                      wrote:
>>
>>                                            Hi Michael,
>>
>>                                            I'm interested in working on
>>             this. I'll discuss
>>                                      with Martin next
>>                                            week when we're both back in
>>             the office.
>>
>>                                            Val
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>                                            On 08/05/14 07:46, Michael
>>             Lawrence wrote:
>>
>>                                                Hi guys (Val, Martin,
>> Herve):
>>
>>                                                Anyone have an itch for
>>             optimization? The
>>                                      writeVcf function is
>>                                                currently a
>>                                                bottleneck in our WGS
>>             genotyping pipeline. For
>>                                      a typical 50
>>                                                million row
>>                                                gVCF, it was taking 2.25
>>             hours prior to
>>                                      yesterday's improvements
>>                                                (pasteCollapseRows) that
>>             brought it down to
>>                                      about 1 hour, which
>>                                                is still
>>                                                too long by my standards
>>             (> 0). Only takes 3
>>                                      minutes to call the
>>                                                genotypes
>>                                                (and associated
>>             likelihoods etc) from the
>>                                      variant calls (using
>>                                                80 cores and
>>                                                450 GB RAM on one node),
>>             so the output is an
>>                                      issue. Profiling
>>                                                suggests that
>>                                                the running time scales
>>             non-linearly in the
>>                                      number of rows.
>>
>>                                                Digging a little deeper,
>>             it seems to be
>>                                      something with R's
>>                                                string/memory
>>                                                allocation. Below,
>>             pasting 1 million strings
>>                                      takes 6 seconds, but
>>                                      10
>>                                                million strings takes
>>             over 2 minutes. It gets
>>                                      way worse with 50
>>                                                million. I
>>                                                suspect it has something
>>             to do with R's string
>>                                      hash table.
>>
>>                                                set.seed(1000)
>>                                                end <- sample(1e8, 1e6)
>>                                                system.time(paste0("END",
>>             "=", end))
>>                                                     user  system elapsed
>>                                                    6.396   0.028   6.420
>>
>>                                                end <- sample(1e8, 1e7)
>>                                                system.time(paste0("END",
>>             "=", end))
>>                                                     user  system elapsed
>>                                                134.714   0.352 134.978
>>
>>                                                Indeed, even this takes a
>>             long time (in a
>>                                      fresh session):
>>
>>                                                set.seed(1000)
>>                                                end <- sample(1e8, 1e6)
>>                                                end <- sample(1e8, 1e7)
>>
>>             system.time(as.character(end))
>>                                                     user  system elapsed
>>                                                   57.224   0.156  57.366
>>
>>                                                But running it a second
>>             time is faster (about
>>                                      what one would
>>                                                expect?):
>>
>>                                                system.time(levels <-
>>             as.character(end))
>>                                                     user  system elapsed
>>                                                   23.582   0.021  23.589
>>
>>                                                I did some simple
>>             profiling of R to find that
>>                                      the resizing of
>>                                                the string
>>                                                hash table is not a
>>             significant component of
>>                                      the time. So maybe
>>                                                something
>>                                                to do with the R heap/gc?
>>             No time right now to
>>                                      go deeper. But I
>>                                                know Martin
>>                                                likes this sort of
>> thing ;)
>>
>>                                                Michael
>>
>>                                                         [[alternative
>>             HTML version deleted]]
>>
>>
>>
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