Akka Remote Performance issue

Question

I am facing a performance issue in Akka remoting. I have 2 actors Actor1 and Actor2. The message sending between the actor is synchronous ask request from Actor1 to Actor2 and the response back from Actor2 to Actor1. Below is the sample code snippets and config of my Actor:

Actor1.java:

object Actor1 extends App {
  val conf = ConfigFactory.load()
  val system = ActorSystem("testSystem1", conf.getConfig("remote1"))
  val actor = system.actorOf(Props[Actor1].withDispatcher("my-dispatcher"), "actor1")
  implicit val timeOut: Timeout = Timeout(10 seconds)

  class Actor1 extends Actor {
    var value = 0
    var actorRef: ActorRef = null

    override def preStart(): Unit = {
      println(self.path)
    }

    override def receive: Receive = {
      case "register" =>
        actorRef = sender()
        println("Registering the actor")
        val time = System.currentTimeMillis()
        (1 to 300000).foreach(value => {
          if (value % 10000 == 0) {
            println("message count -- " + value + " --- time taken - " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - time))
          }
          Await.result(actorRef ? value, 10 seconds)
        })
        val totalTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - time
        println("Total Time - " + totalTime)
    }
  }

}

Actor2.java:

object Actor2 extends App {
  val conf = ConfigFactory.load()
  val system = ActorSystem("testSystem1", conf.getConfig("remote2"))
  val actor = system.actorOf(Props[Actor2].withDispatcher("my-dispatcher"), "actor2")
  implicit val timeOut: Timeout = Timeout(10 seconds)
  actor ! "send"


  class Actor2 extends Actor {
    var value = 0
    var actorSelection: ActorSelection = context.actorSelection("akka://[email protected]:6061/user/actor1")

    override def receive: Receive = {
      case "send" =>
        actorSelection ! "register"
      case int: Int => {
        sender() ! 1
      }
    }
  }


}

application.conf:

remote1 {
  my-dispatcher {
    executor = "thread-pool-executor"
    type = PinnedDispatcher
  }
  akka {
    actor {
      provider = remote
    }
    remote {
      artery {
        transport = tcp # See Selecting a transport below
        canonical.hostname = "127.0.0.1"
        canonical.port = 6061
      }
    }
  }
}

remote2 {
  my-dispatcher {
    executor = "thread-pool-executor"
    type = PinnedDispatcher
  }
  akka {
    actor {
      provider = remote
    }
    remote {
      artery {
        transport = tcp # See Selecting a transport below
        canonical.hostname = "127.0.0.1"
        canonical.port = 6062
      }
    }
  }
}

Output:

message count -- 10000 --- time taken - 5871
message count -- 20000 --- time taken - 9043
message count -- 30000 --- time taken - 12198
message count -- 40000 --- time taken - 15363
message count -- 50000 --- time taken - 18649
message count -- 60000 --- time taken - 22074
message count -- 70000 --- time taken - 25487
message count -- 80000 --- time taken - 28820
message count -- 90000 --- time taken - 32118
message count -- 100000 --- time taken - 35634
message count -- 110000 --- time taken - 39146
message count -- 120000 --- time taken - 42539
message count -- 130000 --- time taken - 45997
message count -- 140000 --- time taken - 50013
message count -- 150000 --- time taken - 53466
message count -- 160000 --- time taken - 57117
message count -- 170000 --- time taken - 61246
message count -- 180000 --- time taken - 65051
message count -- 190000 --- time taken - 68809
message count -- 200000 --- time taken - 72908
message count -- 210000 --- time taken - 77091
message count -- 220000 --- time taken - 80855
message count -- 230000 --- time taken - 84679
message count -- 240000 --- time taken - 89089
message count -- 250000 --- time taken - 93132
message count -- 260000 --- time taken - 97360
message count -- 270000 --- time taken - 101442
message count -- 280000 --- time taken - 105656
message count -- 290000 --- time taken - 109665
message count -- 300000 --- time taken - 113706
Total Time - 113707

Is there any wrong I am doing here?. Any observation or suggestion to improve the performance?

Answer 1

The main issue I see with the code is Await.result(). That is a blocking operation, and will most likely affect performance.

I suggest collecting the results in a fixed array / list, use an integer as an array, and consider it complete when the expected number of responses have been received.