sync: map.Range has started allocating as of Go 1.20

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

$ go version
go version go1.20.4 linux/amd64

Does this issue reproduce with the latest release?

Yes (with go 1.21.0)

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

go env Output

$ go env
GO111MODULE="on"
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/home/murthy/.cache/go-build"
GOENV="/home/murthy/.config/go/env"
GOEXE=""
GOEXPERIMENT=""
GOFLAGS=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOINSECURE=""
GOMODCACHE="/home/murthy/go/pkg/mod"
GONOPROXY=""
GONOSUMDB=""
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/murthy/go"
GOPRIVATE=""
GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
GOVCS=""
GOVERSION="go1.20.4"
GCCGO="gccgo"
GOAMD64="v1"
AR="ar"
CC="gcc"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
GOMOD="/dev/null"
GOWORK=""
CGO_CFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
CGO_CXXFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_FFLAGS="-O2 -g"
CGO_LDFLAGS="-O2 -g"
PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build2467870538=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"

What did you do?

The latest versions of go runtime added a 16Byte allocation to sync map Range function. This was not the case in prior releases.
I have tested go 1.19.5 (which does not do the allocation) and go 1.20.4 and go 1.21.0 (both of which do the allocation).

package smap

import (
	"sync"
	"testing"
)

var myMap sync.Map

func BenchmarkRange(b *testing.B) {
	b.ReportAllocs()
	b.ResetTimer()

	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		myMap.Range(func(k interface{}, v interface{}) bool {
			return true
		})

	}
}

func init() {
	for ind := 0; ind < 100; ind++ {
		myMap.Store(ind, (ind*2 + 1))
	}
}

What did you expect to see?

[murthy@testbuild] 12:35:32 $ /usr/local/go1.19.5/bin/go test -bench Range
goos: linux
goarch: amd64
pkg: smap/go1195
cpu: AMD EPYC 7352 24-Core Processor
BenchmarkRange-16    	  840378	      1418 ns/op	       0 B/op	       0 allocs/op
PASS
ok  	smap/go1195	2.041s
[murthy@testbuild] 12:35:39 $

What did you see instead?

[murthy@testbuild] 12:36:03 $ go version
go version go1.20.4 linux/amd64
[murthy@testbuild] 12:36:05 $ go test -bench Range
goos: linux
goarch: amd64
pkg: smap/go1204
cpu: AMD EPYC 7352 24-Core Processor
BenchmarkRange-16    	  782552	      1512 ns/op	      16 B/op	       1 allocs/op
PASS
ok  	smap/go1204	2.029s
[murthy@testbuild] 12:36:12 $

[ianlancetaylor]

CC @bcmills

[mauri870]

Seems like this allocation comes from the change from atomic.Value to atomic.Pointer in this CL https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/426074

[ianlancetaylor]

CC @dsnet

[mauri870]

Specifically, what is allocating memory is the empty value for the return:

func (m *Map) loadReadOnly() readOnly {
	if p := m.read.Load(); p != nil {
		return *p
	}
	return readOnly{}
}

[bcmills]

Ah, probably escape analysis. What we need here is some manual memory management. 🙃

The line in Range that says:

m.read.Store(&read)

should be changed to instead make a copy of the variable, and store a pointer to that copy so that it only escapes in that one code path. (I guess the compiler doesn't do live-range splitting for local variables.)

[gopherbot]

Change https://go.dev/cl/524976 mentions this issue: sync: prevent (*Map).Range from always escaping