Language with lowest memory foot print

Asterisk Asterisk APIs
1

I am writing some new code and I am experimenting with PHP and Python. The script will be connecting to a MongoDB instance and running a few core functions such as playing messages, playing MusicOnHold and voicemail. I noticed that every time I invoke an AGI and keep the call up, regardless of the language (PHP or Python) once I load the modules needed for my code, each agi uses 20-30 megs. This is sort of OK till there is a rush of calls. I am wondering if there is any other language that will offer a lower memory foot print such as
node.js
Go
Ruby
Perl

Has anyone dealt with any of these and Asterisk agi’s in which would have the lowest memory footprint?

TIA.

2

Are you sure that that is 20-30 MB exclusive to the process, and not, mainly, shared, read-only, pages?

If you want a minimum footprint, you should use Fast AGI.

In terms of language, C is going to have the lowest footprint of commonly used languages.

3

Sounds like an issue with the Asterisk API wrappers you are using.

4

C (or any compiled language) eliminates dragging an interpreter into memory and parsing the scripting language source (Perl, PHP, Python) and will have the smallest memory footprint.

I write almost all of my AGIs in C.

5

Just for fun, in one terminal I started a new Python session:

ldo@theon:seaskirt> python3
Python 3.11.4 (main, Jun  7 2023, 10:13:09) [GCC 12.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Check its RAM usage from another terminal:

ldo@theon:~> cat /proc/879757/smaps_rollup
00400000-7fffa697c000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0                              [rollup]
Rss:               12016 kB
... (etc) ...

Load my Seaskirt module into the Python session:

>>> import seaskirt
>>>

Check its RAM usage again:

ldo@theon:~> cat /proc/879757/smaps_rollup
00400000-7fffa697c000 ---p 00000000 00:00 0                              [rollup]
Rss:               30384 kB
... (etc) ...

So it’s gone from 12MB to 30MB.

So yeah, there would be a certain overhead in creating lots of these processes. FastAGI would be the way to go.

6

Just for comparison:

The sum of the Rss of one of my (very small) C AGIs on Linux 3.10 (before _rollup) is 416 kB

The sum of the Rss of the largest AGIs (including accessing a MySQL database) is 2,892 kB.

7

Lower-level languages are always going to be more “efficient” than higher-level ones, aren’t they. Your C code likely looks bloated compared to something written in assembly language, for example.

But how much code are you going to have to add to handle

  • a TLS connection
  • async event handling?

e.g. a simple example, just making a call:

async def main() :
    the_conn = await seaskirt.ManagerAsync \
      (
        username = user,
        password = password,
        ssl_context = ssl_ca,
        want_events = False,
        timeout = timeout,
        debug = debug
      )
    sys.stdout.write("the_conn opened, hello = \"%s\"\n" % the_conn.hello)
    originate_args = \
        {
            "action" : "Originate",
            "parms" :
                {
                    "Channel" : channel,
                    "Context" : context,
                    "Exten" : extension,
                    "Priority" : 1,
                    "Async" : "false",
                    "Timeout" : round(timeout * 1000),
                },
        }
    response = await the_conn.transact(**originate_args)
    sys.stdout.write(repr(response) + "\n")
    await the_conn.transact("Logoff", {})
    await the_conn.close()
#end main
8

Look at Mr 30MB callin’ Mr 3MB bloated :slight_smile:

In a previous life I coded in MACRO-11 (assembly) on multi-user computers that only had 32KB of per user address space.

9

I see your PDP-11 and raise you a PDP-8. Or better still, a Motorola 6800D2 kit with 384 bytes of RAM, programmed via a hex keypad. Or a TI-58C calculator with a maximum of 480 program steps or 60 memory registers, but not both at once.

But those who are not into techno-chest-beating might be interesting in seeing where some of the memory goes. I did a more detailed monitoring of the RAM usage of a Python process as it loads various modules needed by Seaskirt, ending with Seaskirt itself. Here are some of the points at which significant (> 1MiB) additional memory was needed:

  • Initial python3 command (as before) — 12.1MiB
  • import ssl — 4.2MiB
  • import http.client — 1.5MiB
  • import asyncio — 2.7MiB
  • import wsproto — 1.1MiB
  • import seaskirt — 6.4MiB
10

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