performance regression in ssl module under free-threading

On free-threading there is a large ~20% performance regression under asyncio_tcp_ssl benchmark. A large part of slowdown is from #124993 which added critical sections and locks for thread safety however 20% is large slowdown for the important single threaded use-case.

Critical sections are slow especially for extensions which are dynamically loaded because accessing thread states is slow and there are multiple function calls even for the fastpath of no contention for acquisition of critical section.

Comparing the assembly of _ssl_RAND_status in free-threading vs normal build:

free-threading:

Dump of assembler code for function _ssl_RAND_status:
   0x00007ffff7b97090 <+0>:     push   %rbx
   0x00007ffff7b97091 <+1>:     sub    $0x10,%rsp
   0x00007ffff7b97095 <+5>:     lea    0xa(%rdi),%rbx
   0x00007ffff7b97099 <+9>:     mov    $0x1,%cl
   0x00007ffff7b9709b <+11>:    xor    %eax,%eax
   0x00007ffff7b9709d <+13>:    lock cmpxchg %cl,0xa(%rdi)
   0x00007ffff7b970a2 <+18>:    jne    0x7ffff7b970c5 <_ssl_RAND_status+53>
   0x00007ffff7b970a4 <+20>:    call   0x7ffff7b950e0 <_PyThreadState_GetCurrent@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970a9 <+25>:    mov    %rbx,0x8(%rsp)
   0x00007ffff7b970ae <+30>:    mov    0xb0(%rax),%rcx
   0x00007ffff7b970b5 <+37>:    mov    %rcx,(%rsp)
   0x00007ffff7b970b9 <+41>:    mov    %rsp,%rcx
   0x00007ffff7b970bc <+44>:    mov    %rcx,0xb0(%rax)
   0x00007ffff7b970c3 <+51>:    jmp    0x7ffff7b970d0 <_ssl_RAND_status+64>
   0x00007ffff7b970c5 <+53>:    mov    %rsp,%rdi
   0x00007ffff7b970c8 <+56>:    mov    %rbx,%rsi
   0x00007ffff7b970cb <+59>:    call   0x7ffff7b95cc0 <_PyCriticalSection_BeginSlow@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970d0 <+64>:    call   0x7ffff7b95c30 <RAND_status@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970d5 <+69>:    movslq %eax,%rdi
   0x00007ffff7b970d8 <+72>:    call   0x7ffff7b96560 <PyBool_FromLong@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970dd <+77>:    mov    %rax,%rbx
   0x00007ffff7b970e0 <+80>:    mov    0x8(%rsp),%rdi
   0x00007ffff7b970e5 <+85>:    test   %rdi,%rdi
   0x00007ffff7b970e8 <+88>:    je     0x7ffff7b97116 <_ssl_RAND_status+134>
   0x00007ffff7b970ea <+90>:    xor    %ecx,%ecx
   0x00007ffff7b970ec <+92>:    mov    $0x1,%al
   0x00007ffff7b970ee <+94>:    lock cmpxchg %cl,(%rdi)
   0x00007ffff7b970f2 <+98>:    je     0x7ffff7b970f9 <_ssl_RAND_status+105>
   0x00007ffff7b970f4 <+100>:   call   0x7ffff7b954a0 <PyMutex_Unlock@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970f9 <+105>:   call   0x7ffff7b950e0 <_PyThreadState_GetCurrent@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b970fe <+110>:   mov    (%rsp),%rcx
   0x00007ffff7b97102 <+114>:   mov    %rcx,0xb0(%rax)
   0x00007ffff7b97109 <+121>:   test   $0x1,%cl
   0x00007ffff7b9710c <+124>:   je     0x7ffff7b97116 <_ssl_RAND_status+134>
   0x00007ffff7b9710e <+126>:   mov    %rax,%rdi
   0x00007ffff7b97111 <+129>:   call   0x7ffff7b95f90 <_PyCriticalSection_Resume@plt>
   0x00007ffff7b97116 <+134>:   mov    %rbx,%rax
   0x00007ffff7b97119 <+137>:   add    $0x10,%rsp
   0x00007ffff7b9711d <+141>:   pop    %rbx
   0x00007ffff7b9711e <+142>:   ret
End of assembler dump.

normal build:

   0x00007ffff773bd00 <+0>:     push   %rax
   0x00007ffff773bd01 <+1>:     call   0x7ffff773ac20 <RAND_status@plt>
   0x00007ffff773bd06 <+6>:     movslq %eax,%rdi
   0x00007ffff773bd09 <+9>:     pop    %rax
   0x00007ffff773bd0a <+10>:    jmp    0x7ffff773b520 <PyBool_FromLong@plt>

Linked PRs

@ZeroIntensity

cc @ZeroIntensity as author of #124993

Do you have any fixes in mind? I don't know what we could do to speed this up, especially considering critical sections are already pretty fast for single-threaded code.

We need to be very careful with adding locking to ssl. If we add it in the wrong place, we get another Regression in ssl module between 3.13.5 and 3.13.6: reading from a TLS-encrypted connection blocks #137583.
Several OpenSSL calls execute callbacks, which can in turn call Python code.

Critical sections solve both of those problems, but something like PyMutex does not.

I am looking at _ssl._SSLSocket.write which is called frequently by asyncio. From #124993 critical section was added on it but that function releases the thread state thereby releasing the critical section while calling SSL_write_ex. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of adding critical section if it gets released anyways? While the critical section is released another thread is free to call _ssl._SSLSocket.write concurrently so there is no thread safety.

cpython/Modules/_ssl.c

Lines 2800 to 2804 in efc37ba

    
           Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS; 
        
           retval = SSL_write_ex(self->ssl, b->buf, (size_t)b->len, &count); 
        
           err = _PySSL_errno(retval == 0, self->ssl, retval); 
        
           Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS; 
        
           _PySSL_FIX_ERRNO;

The critical section is there to protect races on fields like self->err that are modified outside the Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS block. I think my initial analysis was wrong on that PR; it's not OpenSSL that's thread-unsafe, it's the ssl objects themselves.

The critical section is there to protect races on fields like self->err that are modified outside the Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS block.

I don't think adding critical section just to protect self->err is correct, the bigger problem is that even with critical section SSL_write_ex can be called concurrently which may mutate self->ssl inside openssl.

FWIW I don't think these APIs are thread safe even in gil enabled build

I just looked at the code briefly, but it looks to me like we can avoid the self->err mess with a bit of refactoring (just pass err to PySSL_SetError)

self->exc looks trickier

FWIW I don't think these APIs are thread safe even in gil enabled build

They should be, I added tests stressing that in #134724. If functions like SSL_write_ex aren't thread-safe, I really don't think there's any sort of synchronization we can add without getting deadlocks.

Oh wait, nevermind, I added tests stressing concurrent use of SSLContext.

gh-140795: fetch thread state once on fast path for critical sections (…

pythongh-140795: fetch thread state once on fast path for critical se…

pythongh-140795: Keep 'err' in local variable in _ssl.c

gh-140795: Keep 'err' in local variable in _ssl.c (gh-143275)

pythongh-140795: Remove 'exc' field in SSLObject

Merge branch 'main' into pythongh-140795-ssl-exc

gh-140795: Remove 'exc' field in SSLObject (gh-143491)

pythongh-140795: Remove 'exc' field in SSLObject (pythongh-143491)

pythongh-140795: Keep 'err' in local variable in _ssl.c (pythongh-143275

pythongh-140795: Remove 'exc' field in SSLObject (pythongh-143491)

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performance regression in ssl module under free-threading #140795

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	Py_BEGIN_ALLOW_THREADS;
	retval = SSL_write_ex(self->ssl, b->buf, (size_t)b->len, &count);
	err = _PySSL_errno(retval == 0, self->ssl, retval);
	Py_END_ALLOW_THREADS;
	_PySSL_FIX_ERRNO;

performance regression in ssl module under free-threading #140795

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kumaraditya303 commented on Oct 30, 2025

ZeroIntensity commented on Oct 30, 2025

kumaraditya303 commented on Oct 30, 2025

ZeroIntensity commented on Oct 30, 2025

kumaraditya303 commented on Oct 30, 2025

colesbury commented on Oct 30, 2025

colesbury commented on Oct 30, 2025

ZeroIntensity commented on Oct 30, 2025

ZeroIntensity commented on Oct 30, 2025

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