29 - The wall at 10K → 1M

Concept node: see the DAG and glossary entry 29.

A simulator that runs cleanly at 10 000 creatures often grinds to a halt at 1 000 000. Not because the algorithm changed - because constant factors that were invisible at the smaller scale now bind.

This chapter is about finding the wall. The fixes are techniques you already have: narrower fields (§7), subscriptions (§26), working-set discipline (§27), spatial binning and locality (§28), pre-sized buffers, batched cleanup. The chapter’s job is to teach the reader to measure - to find which constant factors blew up.

Constant-factor bugs that bind at 10K → 1M:

• Reallocation. A to_insert: Vec<CreatureRow> that grew lazily was fine at 100 pushes per tick (10K creatures × 1% reproduction). At 10K pushes per tick (1M × 1%), the reallocations dominate. Fix: Vec::with_capacity(estimated_max).
• Linear scans. hungry.iter().any(|&s| s == target) was 0.1 ms at 10K, but 10 ms at 1M. Fix: the sparse set (§23) - O(1) membership, no per-creature flag.
• Cache spillover. creature working set at 10K is 200 KB (L2-resident). At 1M it is 20 MB (L3-resident). Per-element time triples. Fix: narrower fields (§7) and the spatial compaction for locality (§28); for a system that touches only a subset, a subscription (§26).
• HashMap iteration order. A HashMap<u32, _> iterated by systems that need deterministic order. At 10K the cost was tolerable; at 1M the bandwidth cost is high. Fix: BTreeMap or Vec<(K, V)>.
• Per-tick allocation. A system that allocates a fresh Vec per tick was fine when the Vec was 1 KB. At 1M it is 100 KB; allocation latency starts to matter. Fix: reuse buffers across ticks.
• Logging. A println! per creature was tolerable at 10K. At 1M it is the simulator’s bottleneck. Fix: buffered logging, periodic snapshots, or simply turn it off.

The pattern: any cost that was O(1) per creature, multiplied by 1M, is no longer free. Anything that was O(N) per tick at 10K is now O(N²)-equivalent in wall time. The fixes are local - each cost is a single-line change - but finding them requires measurement.

The right tool is a profiler. cargo flamegraph (or perf record + perf report) tells you where the time goes. The same simulator at 10K and 1M produces different flame graphs; the wall is the difference.

A useful exercise: run your simulator at 10K for 1000 ticks; time it. Run at 1M for 100 ticks (same total entity-ticks); time it. The 1M version should take ~10× longer, not 100×. If it takes 100×, something has crossed a constant-factor wall and the profiler will show you what.

The fix is structural. Apply the techniques: narrow fields, subscriptions, working set, spatial binning and locality, pre-sized buffers, batched cleanup, deterministic structures. Each is a chapter you have already read. The wall is the moment they all become non-optional.

Exercises

1. Calibration. Run your simulator at N = 10K for 1000 ticks. Time it. Note the wall-clock total.
2. Scale up. Run at N = 1M for 100 ticks (same total entity-ticks). Time it. Compute the ratio.
3. Profile. Use cargo flamegraph (or perf) on the 1M run. Identify the top three hottest functions.
4. Pre-size to_insert. Apply Vec::with_capacity to your cleanup buffers. Re-run; re-profile. Did the hot list change?
5. Subscribe a subset system. Take a system that acts on a fraction of creatures (starvation, reproduction) and give it a slot-keyed subscription table (§26) instead of scanning all 1M and branching. Re-run; re-profile. The scan-all frame should drop off the flame graph; the system’s work falls in proportion to the subscribed fraction.
6. Use index maps. Replace any linear iter().any() with the §23 id_to_slot lookup. Re-run; re-profile.
7. (stretch) Find one new wall. Pick any system in your simulator and find one constant factor that scales worse than expected. The fix is usually one of the techniques above; identifying which one is the lesson.

Reference notes in 29_wall_10k_to_1m_solutions.md.

What’s next

§30 - Moving beyond the wall takes the next step: when even your fastest, tightest, subscription-driven, compacted-for-locality simulator no longer fits in RAM, the architecture itself shifts.