QFuture Memoryleak

Question

I want to parallelize a function and have the problem that after a few hours my memory is overloaded.

The test program calculates something simple, and works so far. Only the memory usage is constantly increasing.

QT Project file:

QT -= gui
QT += concurrent widgets
CONFIG += c++11 console
CONFIG -= app_bundle
DEFINES += QT_DEPRECATED_WARNINGS
SOURCES += main.cpp

QT program file:

#include <QCoreApplication>
#include <qdebug.h>
#include <qtconcurrentrun.h>

double parallel_function(int instance){
    return (double)(instance)*10.0;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
    int nr_of_threads = 8;
    double result_sum,temp_var;
    for(qint32 i = 0; i<100000000; i++){
      QFuture<double> * future = new QFuture<double>[nr_of_threads];

      for(int thread = 0; thread < nr_of_threads; thread++){
        future[thread] = QtConcurrent::run(parallel_function,thread);
      }
      for(int thread = 0; thread < nr_of_threads; thread++){
        future[thread].waitForFinished();
        temp_var = future[thread].result();
        qDebug()<<"result: " << temp_var;
        result_sum += temp_var;
      }
  }

  qDebug()<<"total: "<<result_sum;
  return a.exec();
}

As I have observed, QtConcurrent::run(parallel_function,thread) allocates memory, but does not release memory after future[thread].waitForFinished().

What's wrong here?

Answer 1

Here's how this might look - note how much simpler everything can be! You're dead set on doing manual memory management: why? First of all, QFuture is a value. You can store it very efficiently in any vector container that will manage the memory for you. You can iterate such a container using range-for. Etc.

QT = concurrent   # dependencies are automatic, you don't use widgets
CONFIG += c++14 console
CONFIG -= app_bundle
SOURCES = main.cpp

Even though the example is synthetic and the map_function is very simple, it's worth considering how to do things most efficiently and expressively. Your algorithm is a typical map-reduce operation, and blockingMappedReduce has half the overhead of manually doing all of the work.

First of all, let's recast the original problem in C++, instead of some C-with-pluses Frankenstein.

// https://github.com/KubaO/stackoverflown/tree/master/questions/future-ranges-49107082
/* QtConcurrent will include QtCore as well */
#include <QtConcurrent>
#include <algorithm>
#include <iterator>

using result_type = double;

static result_type map_function(int instance){
   return instance * result_type(10);
}

static void sum_modifier(result_type &result, result_type value) {
   result += value;
}

static result_type sum_function(result_type result, result_type value) {
   return result + value;
}

result_type sum_approach1(int const N) {
   QVector<QFuture<result_type>> futures(N);
   int id = 0;
   for (auto &future : futures)
      future = QtConcurrent::run(map_function, id++);
   return std::accumulate(futures.cbegin(), futures.cend(), result_type{}, sum_function);
}

There is no manual memory management, and no explicit splitting into "threads" - that was pointless, since the concurrent execution platform is aware of how many threads there are. So this is already better!

But this seems quite wasteful: each future internally allocates at least once (!).

Instead of using futures explicitly for each result, we can use the map-reduce framework. To generate the sequence, we can define an iterator that provides the integers we wish to work on. The iterator can be a forward or a bidirectional one, and its implementation is the bare minimum needed by QtConcurrent framework.

#include <iterator>

template <typename tag> class num_iterator : public std::iterator<tag, int, int, const int*, int> {
   int num = 0;
   using self = num_iterator;
   using base = std::iterator<tag, int, int, const int*, int>;
public:
   explicit num_iterator(int num = 0) : num(num) {}
   self &operator++() { num ++; return *this; }
   self &operator--() { num --; return *this; }
   self &operator+=(typename base::difference_type d) { num += d; return *this; }
   friend typename base::difference_type operator-(self lhs, self rhs) { return lhs.num - rhs.num; }
   bool operator==(self o) const { return num == o.num; }
   bool operator!=(self o) const { return !(*this == o); }
   typename base::reference operator*() const { return num; }
};

using num_f_iterator = num_iterator<std::forward_iterator_tag>;

result_type sum_approach2(int const N) {
   auto results = QtConcurrent::blockingMapped<QVector<result_type>>(num_f_iterator{0}, num_f_iterator{N}, map_function);
   return std::accumulate(results.cbegin(), results.cend(), result_type{}, sum_function);
}

using num_b_iterator = num_iterator<std::bidirectional_iterator_tag>;

result_type sum_approach3(int const N) {
   auto results = QtConcurrent::blockingMapped<QVector<result_type>>(num_b_iterator{0}, num_b_iterator{N}, map_function);
   return std::accumulate(results.cbegin(), results.cend(), result_type{}, sum_function);
}

Could we drop the std::accumulate and use blockingMappedReduced instead? Sure:

result_type sum_approach4(int const N) {
   return QtConcurrent::blockingMappedReduced(num_b_iterator{0}, num_b_iterator{N},
                                              map_function, sum_modifier);
}

We can also try a random access iterator:

using num_r_iterator = num_iterator<std::random_access_iterator_tag>;

result_type sum_approach5(int const N) {
   return QtConcurrent::blockingMappedReduced(num_r_iterator{0}, num_r_iterator{N},
                                              map_function, sum_modifier);
}

Finally, we can switch from using range-generating iterators, to a precomputed range:

#include <numeric>

result_type sum_approach6(int const N) {
   QVector<int> sequence(N);
   std::iota(sequence.begin(), sequence.end(), 0);
   return QtConcurrent::blockingMappedReduced(sequence, map_function, sum_modifier);
}

Of course, our point is to benchmark it all:

template <typename F> void benchmark(F fun, double const N) {
   QElapsedTimer timer;
   timer.start();
   auto result = fun(N);
   qDebug() << "sum:" << fixed << result << "took" << timer.elapsed()/N << "ms/item";
}

int main() {
   const int N = 1000000;
   benchmark(sum_approach1, N);
   benchmark(sum_approach2, N);
   benchmark(sum_approach3, N);
   benchmark(sum_approach4, N);
   benchmark(sum_approach5, N);
   benchmark(sum_approach6, N);
}

On my system, in release build, the output is:

sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.015778 ms/item
sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.003631 ms/item
sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.003610 ms/item
sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.005414 ms/item
sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.000011 ms/item
sum: 4999995000000.000000 took 0.000008 ms/item

Note how using map-reduce on a random-iterable sequence has over 3 orders of magnitude lower overhead than using QtConcurrent::run, and is 2 orders of magnitude faster than non-random-iterable solutions.

Answer 2

You have memory leak because future array is not deleted. Add delete[] future at the end of outer for loop.

for(qint32 i = 0; i<100000000; i++)
{
   QFuture<double> * future = new QFuture<double>[nr_of_threads];

   for(int thread = 0; thread < nr_of_threads; thread++){
     future[thread] = QtConcurrent::run(parallel_function,thread);
   }
   for(int thread = 0; thread < nr_of_threads; thread++){
      future[thread].waitForFinished();
      temp_var = future[thread].result();
      qDebug()<<"result: " << temp_var;
      result_sum += temp_var;
   }

   delete[] future; // <--
}