Recently @han0110 did an analysis of peak memory estimation for halo2 proving, with a script implementation that takes a ConstraintSystem and estimates the peak memory of the prover. I ported that script to the zkevm-circuits and it can be seen here: https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/zkevm-circuits/blob/3bbc757a20d9d9f7759db47c096d5395361bee74/zkevm-circuits/src/bin/stats/halo2_stats.rs#L232

Recently I ran some benchmarks with this test circuit in https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/halo2/blob/1650a0b07fbbfeebab71f5650ccb62ccd20de0ff/halo2_proofs/tests/frontend_backend_split.rs to measure the peak memory and verify how accurate the estimation is, and I'm happy to report that the estimation is very accurate!

These are the characteristics of the circuit (where wf is the WIDTH_FACTOR and can be parametrized):

max_degree = 6
num_fixed_columns = 8 * wf
num_advice_columns = 4 * wf
num_instance_columns = 1 * wf
num_permutation_columns = 4 * wf
num_lookups = 1 * wf

These are the results for k = 10,12,14,16,18 and wf = 1,2,3,4,5,6 (memory values in MiB):

k = 10, wf = 1, max_mem_estimate = 7
k = 10, wf = 1, max_mem = 7
k = 10, wf = 2, max_mem_estimate = 13
k = 10, wf = 2, max_mem = 13
k = 10, wf = 3, max_mem_estimate = 18
k = 10, wf = 3, max_mem = 19
k = 10, wf = 4, max_mem_estimate = 24
k = 10, wf = 4, max_mem = 24
k = 10, wf = 5, max_mem_estimate = 29
k = 10, wf = 5, max_mem = 30
k = 10, wf = 6, max_mem_estimate = 35
k = 10, wf = 6, max_mem = 36
k = 12, wf = 1, max_mem_estimate = 29
k = 12, wf = 1, max_mem = 30
k = 12, wf = 2, max_mem_estimate = 52
k = 12, wf = 2, max_mem = 53
k = 12, wf = 3, max_mem_estimate = 74
k = 12, wf = 3, max_mem = 75
k = 12, wf = 4, max_mem_estimate = 96
k = 12, wf = 4, max_mem = 98
k = 12, wf = 5, max_mem_estimate = 118
k = 12, wf = 5, max_mem = 120
k = 12, wf = 6, max_mem_estimate = 141
k = 12, wf = 6, max_mem = 143
k = 14, wf = 1, max_mem_estimate = 119
k = 14, wf = 1, max_mem = 122
k = 14, wf = 2, max_mem_estimate = 208
k = 14, wf = 2, max_mem = 212
k = 14, wf = 3, max_mem_estimate = 297
k = 14, wf = 3, max_mem = 302
k = 14, wf = 4, max_mem_estimate = 386
k = 14, wf = 4, max_mem = 392
k = 14, wf = 5, max_mem_estimate = 475
k = 14, wf = 5, max_mem = 482
k = 14, wf = 6, max_mem_estimate = 564
k = 14, wf = 6, max_mem = 572
k = 16, wf = 1, max_mem_estimate = 478
k = 16, wf = 1, max_mem = 490
k = 16, wf = 2, max_mem_estimate = 834
k = 16, wf = 2, max_mem = 850
k = 16, wf = 3, max_mem_estimate = 1190
k = 16, wf = 3, max_mem = 1210
k = 16, wf = 4, max_mem_estimate = 1546
k = 16, wf = 4, max_mem = 1570
k = 16, wf = 5, max_mem_estimate = 1902
k = 16, wf = 5, max_mem = 1930
k = 16, wf = 6, max_mem_estimate = 2258
k = 16, wf = 6, max_mem = 2290
k = 18, wf = 1, max_mem_estimate = 1912
k = 18, wf = 1, max_mem = 1960
k = 18, wf = 2, max_mem_estimate = 3336
k = 18, wf = 2, max_mem = 3400
k = 18, wf = 3, max_mem_estimate = 4760
k = 18, wf = 3, max_mem = 4840
k = 18, wf = 4, max_mem_estimate = 6184
k = 18, wf = 4, max_mem = 6280
k = 18, wf = 5, max_mem_estimate = 7608
k = 18, wf = 5, max_mem = 7720
k = 18, wf = 6, max_mem_estimate = 9032
k = 18, wf = 6, max_mem = 9160

The estimation is ~98% of the measured peak memory. You can reproduce these tests from this branch https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/halo2/tree/test/bench-mem-peak using this script https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/halo2/blob/test/bench-mem-peak/halo2_proofs/bench.sh

Discussion

I think it would be nice to add this estimation into the code. Maybe it can be a halo2_backend function that receives a ConstraintSystemMid and returns the estimated memory? This way different backends can report different memory estimations.

Another point of discussion is that it would be great to figure out the new memory estimation formula from https://github.com/privacy-scaling-explorations/halo2/pull/274

privacy-scaling-explorations / halo2

[Discussion] Peak memory estimation #291

Discussion