Ferrite

Ferrite

What you get: A performance mod for Minecraft 1.21.11. It's a Fabric (Java) mod that calls into native Rust via JNI for the hot paths — Java handles Minecraft integration and mixins, Rust does the heavy per-tick math where the win is big enough to justify crossing the JNI boundary. Two opt-in optimizations:

• Cramming (active by default) — a Rust reimplementation of the mob-vs-mob cramming loop. In any world with 1000+ mobs — singleplayer or multiplayer — it cuts the server's entity-tick cost by roughly 65%.
• Redstone (/ferrite redstone ac on) — adapts Space Walker's Alternate Current algorithm into Ferrite. ~10× fewer wire cascades, contraptions run ~6× faster at equivalent server load. Bit-for-bit correct vs vanilla on 150,000+ oracle checks. Works on existing worlds without toggles or migration.

Every 5 seconds the mod also logs where your game is spending time, so the next optimization can target the next real bottleneck.

Measured results

Cramming (1000+ active mobs)

TPS held at 20 under the same load that was costing vanilla 60 ms/tick of entity work.

Redstone (lag-machine benchmark, AC algorithm enabled)

Two user-visible effects combine:

• Contraptions animate ~4× faster at equivalent server load — each wire cascade now collapses into a single network settle (~84% less wire time per gate tick), so the same per-tick budget processes more gate ticks.
• Server TPS climbs ~40% on CPU-bound hardware — when the server is saturated (as in this 4-core baseline), wire savings convert directly into more completed ticks per second. On unconstrained hardware with headroom, TPS stays flat but the gate-throughput win persists.

Your results will vary. Both tables are single data points on one CPU (Ryzen 9 5900X limited to 4 active cores via affinity) and specific worst-case workloads (concentrated zombie pile for cramming; clock-based lag machine for redstone). Real numbers depend on your hardware, the size and density of your mob farms or contraptions, other mods you run, and the specific redstone patterns you use. On CPU-bound hardware you'll likely see both the cascade-reduction and the TPS improvement; on unconstrained hardware the gate-throughput win (contraptions running visibly faster) persists but the TPS delta can disappear entirely because vanilla wasn't the bottleneck.

Measurement details in CHANGELOG.md and the full investigation path in docs/PROFILING.md.

How it works

Cramming

LivingEntity.tickCramming is intercepted with a Mixin. The first mob's tickCramming call in a given server tick triggers a batch: every mob's position and bounding box is packed into a direct ByteBuffer, Rust builds a 2-block spatial hash, iterates pairs with an array-index guard, applies the vanilla push formula (Chebyshev distance, exact bit-for-bit replica), and returns accumulated (dx, dz) velocity deltas. Java then applies each delta via entity.addVelocity. All subsequent tickCramming calls that tick are cancelled no-ops.

One JNI call per tick. No world state, no snapshot. The win is algorithmic — O(N·k) with spatial hashing where k is local density, instead of vanilla's per-mob level.getEntities(bbox) query-plus-iterate.

Redstone

A @Redirect(NEW) mixin swaps RedstoneWireBlock's redstoneController field from DefaultRedstoneController to FerriteRedstoneController (a subclass) at construction time. With /ferrite redstone ac on, the Ferrite controller routes wire updates through the ported Alternate Current algorithm: build the connected wire network as a graph, find power sources, do one BFS-style settle that touches each wire at most twice, write all power changes in one pass via a chunk-section bypass that skips lighting/heightmap/block-entity bookkeeping. With AC off, the controller delegates to super.update(...) and is byte-for-byte equivalent to vanilla.

Pure Java; no JNI. The win is algorithmic — replacing vanilla's per-wire recursive re-evaluation (which can revisit the same wire dozens of times per cascade) with one settle per cascade, plus skipping the redundant block updates a wire would normally emit between intermediate power levels.

A shadow-compute RedstoneOracle validates every sampled cascade against vanilla's own calculateWirePowerAt, so any algorithm divergence surfaces immediately in [redstone-oracle] log lines.

What's still in progress

• Chunk generation — Rust bulk compute proved 7× faster than vanilla noise-sync in equivalent work, but piping vanilla's internal density-function data into the pipeline cleanly is the current blocker. Framework ships in the jar; output is gated.
• adjustMovementForCollisions port — attempted, shelved. The AABB sweep math runs correctly in Rust, but snapshot materialization cost exceeded the sweep savings at realistic mob counts. Retained as disabled infrastructure for a future invalidation-cache redesign.

How to help

If you run mob farms, crowded multiplayer servers, or singleplayer worlds with lots of mobs or animals:

1. Install Ferrite + Fabric API
2. Play normally for 10+ minutes
3. Open .minecraft/logs/latest.log, search for [ferrite]
4. Share representative [cramming-dispatch] and [movement-internals] lines in a GitHub issue or CurseForge comment

Low-end hardware (4-core CPU, integrated graphics) is especially useful — the [chunkgen] and [client-lag] logs on that profile decide what gets optimized next.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.11
• Fabric Loader 0.18.4+
• Fabric API
• Works in singleplayer and multiplayer
• Server-side compatible — can be installed on a server without requiring players to have the mod

Platform verification

The macOS .dylib is a fat binary produced by lipo -create on the CI macos-latest runner. Happy to mark it verified once a Mac user confirms System.load succeeds — a log snippet showing Loaded rust_mod from /tmp/rust_mod_*.dylib is enough.

The native library is bundled for Windows, Linux, and macOS. If it fails to load on your platform, Ferrite falls back to vanilla behavior automatically — no crashes, no broken worlds. ARM Linux isn't bundled yet.

Credits

• The redstone wire algorithm is adapted from Space Walker's Alternate Current (MIT). Full attribution in LICENSES.md. The port is Yarn-remapped for 1.21.11 and installed transparently as a DefaultRedstoneController subclass; design and algorithm remain entirely Space Walker's.
• The JNI / native-loading scaffolding was originally forked from Brayan-724/rust-mod-probe — the PoC that demonstrated calling Rust from Fabric.