Integrating Existing C++ Libraries into PySpark with Esther Kundin

© 2018 Bloomberg Finance L.P. All rights reserved.
Integrating Existing C++
Libraries into PySpark
Spark+AI Summit 2018
June 5, 2018
Esther Kundin
Senior Software Developer

About Me
• Esther Kundin
— Senior Software Developer
— Lead architect and engineer
— Machine Learning and Text Analysis
— Open Source contributor

Outline
• Why Bother – A Real-Life Use Case
• PySpark Overview
• Interfacing to Your C++ Code
• Putting It All Together
• Challenges
• C++ Tips and Tricks
• Takeaways
• Q&A

A Real-Life Use Case

Why Bother – A Real-Life Use Case
• Realtime system is processing news stories and giving sentiment scores –
convert text to buy, sell or neutral signals on equities mentioned in it
• <10 ms response time
• Want to run the exact same code in real-time and against history
Image courtesy of https://flic.kr/p/ayDEMD

Why Bother – A Real-Life Use Case
• Need to rerun backfill on historical data – 2 TB (compressed)
• Want to run the exact same code against history
• SLA: < 24 hours to recompute entire history
• Can do backfills for new models – monthly basis
Image courtesy of https://flic.kr/p/ayDEMD

PySpark Overview

PySpark Overview
• Python front-end for interfacing with Spark system
• API wrappers for built-in Spark functions
• Allows to run any python code over the rows with User Defined Functions (UDF)
• https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SPARK/PySpark+Internals

Python UDFs
• Native Python code
• Function objects are pickled and passed to workers
• Row data passed to Python workers one at a time
• Code will pass from Python runtime-> JVM runtime -> Python runtime and back
• [SPARK-22216] [SPARK-21187] – support vectorized UDF support with Arrow format –
see Li Jin’s talk

Interfacing to your C++ Code

Interfacing to your C++ Code with PySpark
Pros Cons
SWIG • Very powerful and mature
• supports classes and nested types
• Language-agnostic – can use with JNI
• Complex
• Requires extra .ini file
• Extra step before linking
Cython • Don’t need extra files
• Very easy to get started
• Speeds up python code
• intricate build
• separate install
ctypes • Don’t need extra files
• Very easy to get started
• Limited types available
• tedious
CFFI • easy to use and integrate • PyPy focused
• new, changes quickly

Interfacing to your C++ Code via the JVM
Pros Cons
JNI • Skips the extra Python wrapper step –
straight to JVM space (e.g., Spark ML
Blas implementation using nettlib)
• Clunky, difficult to maintain
SWIG • Very powerful and mature
• supports classes and nested types
• Language-agnostic
• Run over JNI
• Very powerful and mature
• supports classes and
nested types
• Language-agnostic
Scala pipe()
command
• Use a pipe() call to interface with your
C++ code using a system call and
stdin/stdout
• Very brittle

Interfacing to your C++ Code –
SWIG + PySpark Example

Why SWIG + PySpark Example
• SWIG wrapper was already written
• Maintenance – institutional knowledge dictated the choice of Python
• Back-end work, less concerned with exact time it takes to run
• Final run took ~24 hours

SWIG Workflow
C++ code SWIG interface
code
Swig,
compile,
andlink
.so
Other config
files
zip .zip
Deploy to
Cluster HDFS
Python
wrapper

SWIG Example
• Start with simple SWIG interface – adapted from (http://www.swig.org/tutorial.html)
/* File : example.c */
int my_mod(int x, int y) { return x%y; }
/* example.i */
%module example
%{
/* Put header files here or function declarations like below */
extern int my_mod(int x, int y);
%}
extern int my_mod(int x, int y);

SWIG Example continued
• Create the C++ and Python wrappers
$ swig -python example.i

• Compile and link
$ gcc -fPIC -c example.c example_wrap.c
-I/usr/local/include/python2.7
$ld -shared example.o example_wrap.o -o _example.so

• Compile and link
• Test the wrapper
$ gcc -fPIC -c example.c example_wrap.c
-I/usr/local/include/python2.7
$ld -shared example.o example_wrap.o -o _example.so
>>> import example
>>> example.my_mod(7, 3)
1

• Now wrap into a zip file that can be shipped to the Spark cluster
$ zip example.zip _example.so example.py

SWIG Example – PySpark program
UDF run in the
executor
def calculateMod7(val):
sys.path.append('example')
import example
return example.my_mod(val, 7)

SWIG Example – PySpark program
import example
def main():
spark =
SparkSession.
builder.appName('testexample’)
.getOrCreate()
df = spark.read.parquet(‘input_data')
calcmod7 = udf(calculateMod7, IntegerType())
dfout = df.limit(10).withColumn('calc_mod7’,
calcmod7(df.inputcol)).select('calc_mod7')
dfout.write.format("json").mode("overwrite").save('calcmod
7’)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Main run in the
driver
Read input data
Wrap UDF
Add column to
dataframe with UDF
output
Write output to
HDFS

SWIG Example – spark-submit
spark-submit --master yarn --deploy-mode cluster --archives
example.zip#example
example.zip#example –conf
"spark.executor.extraLibraryPath:./example"
example.zip#example –conf
"spark.executor.extraLibraryPath:./example” testexample.py

SWIG Example – Environment Variable
• Make a mod based on an environment variable (don’t really write code like this!)
/* File : example2.c */
#include <stdlib.h>
int my_mod(int x) {
return x%atoi(getenv("MYMODVAL"));
}
/* example2.i */
%module example2
%{
/* Put header files here or function declarations like below */
extern int my_mod(int x);
%}
extern int my_mod(int x);

SWIG Example with Environment Variable
def calculateMod(val):
sys.path.append('example2')
import example2
return example2.my_mod(val)
def main():
spark =
SparkSession.
.getOrCreate()
calcmod = udf(calculateMod, IntegerType())
dfout = df.limit(10).withColumn('calc_mod’,
calcmod(df.inputcol)).select('calc_mod')
’)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

SWIG Example with Environment Variable
Note – this only sets the environment variable on the driver, not the executor
example2.zip#example2 --conf
"spark.executor.extraLibraryPath:./example2" --conf
"spark.executorEnv.MYMODVAL=7” testexample2.py

SWIG Example – PySpark program – Efficiency Attempt
import example
def main():
spark =
SparkSession.
.getOrCreate()
calcmod7 = udf(calculateMod7, IntegerType())
dfout = df.limit(10).withColumn('calc_mod7’,
calcmod7(df.inputcol)).select('calc_mod7')
7’)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

SWIG Example – Efficiency Attempt – FAIL!
command = serializer._read_with_length(file)
File
"/disk/6/yarn/local/usercache/eiserov/appcache/application_1524013
228866_17087/container_e141_1524013228866_17087_01_000009/pyspark.
zip/pyspark/serializers.py", line 169, in _read_with_length
return self.loads(obj)
File
zip/pyspark/serializers.py", line 434, in loads
return pickle.loads(obj)
File
zip/pyspark/cloudpickle.py", line 674, in subimport
__import__(name)
ImportError: ('No module named example', <function subimport at
0x7fbf173e5c80>, ('example',))

Challenges – Efficiency
• UDFs are run on a per-row basis
• All function objects passed from the driver to workers inside the UDF needs to
be able to be pickled
• Most interfaces can’t be pickled
• If not, would create on the executor, row by row
Solutions:
• Do not keep state in your C++ objects
• Spark 2.3 – use Apache Arrow on vectorized UDFs
• Use Python Singletons for state
• df.mapPartitions()

Using mapPartitions Example
class Partitioner:
def __init__(self):
self.callPerDriverSetup
def callPerDriverSetup(self):
pass
def callPerPartitionSetup(self):
import example
self.example = example
def doProcess(self, element):
return self.example.my_mod(element.wire, 7)
def processPartition(self, partition):
self.callPerPartitionSetup()
for element in partition:
yield self.doProcess(element)

Using mapPartitions Example Cont’d
def main():
spark =
SparkSession.
.getOrCreate()
df = spark.read.parquet(input')
p = Partitioner()
rddout = df.rdd.mapPartitions(p.processPartition)
...
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()

Putting It All Together

• Create .so of your C++ code
• Ensure your compiler toolchain matches that of Spark cluster
• Make .so available on the cluster
— Deploy to all cluster machines
— Deploy to known location on HDFS
— Include any necessary config files
— May need to include dependent libs if not on the cluster
• Pass environment variables to drivers and executors

Variable passed Set To Purpose
spark.executor.extraLibraryPath append new path where .so
was deployed to
Ensure C++ lib is loadable
spark.driver.extraLibraryPath append new path where .so
was deployed to
Ensure C++ lib is loadable
--archives .zip or .tgz file that has your
.so and config files
Distributes the file to all
worker locations
--pyfiles .py file that has your UDF Distributes your udf to
workers. Other option is to
have it directly in your .py
that you call spark-submit
on
spark.executorEnv.<ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE> Environment variable value If your UDF code reads
environment variables
spark.yarn.appMasterEnv.
.<ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE>
Environment variable value If your driver code reads
environment variables

$ spark-submit --master yarn --deploy-mode cluster
--conf "spark.executor.extraLibraryPath=<path>:myfolder“
--conf "spark.driver.extraLibraryPath =<path>:./myfolder”
--archives myfolder.zip#myfolder
--conf "spark.executorEnv.MY_ENV=my_env_value”
--conf "spark.yarn.appMasterEnv.MY_DRIVER_ENV=my_driver_env_value”
my_pyspark_file.py
<add file params here>
Run spark-
submit
Set library path on
the driver
Pass your .so and
other files to the
executors
Set the executor
environment
variables
Set the driver
environment
variablesPass your PySpark
code
Pass parameters to
your PySpark code
here
Set library path on
the executor

Challenges

Challenges – Memory
• Spark sets number of partitions heuristically, may not be efficient
• Ensure you have enough memory in your YARN python container to load your .so and
its config files
• https://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2015/03/how-to-tune-your-apache-spark-jobs-part-2/

Memory Settings
• Explicitly set partitions
— Either when reading in file or
— df.repartition(num_partitions)
• Allocate more memory to drivers explicitly:
$ spark-submit --executor-memory 5g --driver-memory 5g --conf
"spark.yarn.executor.memoryOverhead=5000" --conf

C++ Tips and Tricks

Development & Deployment Review
C++ code SWIG interface
code
Swig,
compile,
andlink
.so
Other config
files
zip .zip
Deploy to
Cluster HDFS
Python
wrapper

C++ Tips and Tricks
• Goals:
— Want to minimize changing the Python/C++ API interface
— Want to avoid recompilation and deployment
• Tips
— Flexible templatized interface
— Bundle config file with .so for easier deployment

Conclusion
• Was able to run backfill of all data on existing models in <24 hours
• Was able to generate backfills on new models iteratively

Takeaways
• Spark is flexible enough to include C++ code
• Deploy all dependent code to cluster
• Tweak spark-submit commands to properly pick it up
• Write flexible C++ code to minimize overhead

We are hiring!
Questions?
https://www.bloomberg.com/careers

Integrating Existing C++ Libraries into PySpark with Esther Kundin

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