I just made the initial FFI callout generator, which currently works
only with integer types.

The gap between FFI plugin and native code is much smaller:

NBFFICalloutTests new benchFFITest

#(3833 3064 310)

the first number is FFI plugin callout
the second number is native code FFI callout
the third number is calling an empty method with same number of arguments:

benchFFITest

	"exclude initialization from benchmarks"
	| time1 time2 time3 |
	self ffiTestInt: 1 with: 2 with: 3 with: 4.
	self nbTestInt: 1 with: 2 with: 3 with: 4.

	time1 := [ 1000000 timesRepeat: [ self ffiTestInt: 1 with: 2 with: 3
with: 4 ] ] timeToRun.
	time2 := [ 1000000 timesRepeat: [ self nbTestInt: 1 with: 2 with: 3
with: 4 ] ] timeToRun.
	time3 := [ 1000000 timesRepeat: [ self noOp: 1 with: 2 with: 3 with:
4 ] ] timeToRun.
	
	^ { time1. time2. time3 }


interesting, that if i replacing a smallint -> C int conversion
from
   proxy signed32BitValueOf: EAX.
which expands to:
 push        eax
 mov         eax,[ebp][0C]
 mov         eax,[eax][00000170]
 call        eax
 add         esp,004

to just:
   asm shr: EAX with: 1.

which does the same thing (except big ints conversion)
but saves about 16-50 msecs in a 1000000 loop!


Ohh, it looks like i picked bad function for benching:

/* test passing ints */
EXPORT(int) ffiTestInts(int c1, int c2, int c3, int c4) {
	printf("4 ints came in as\ni1 = %d (%x)\ni2 = %d (%x)\ni3 = %d
(%x)\ni4 = %d (%x)\n", c1, c1, c2, c2, c3, c3, c4, c4);
	return c1+c2;
}

a nasty printf levels all difference between the call types. So its
not very good function to bench a callout interface coercion speed :(

Any good guess , what function of some well-known external library i
could use? It should have at least 3 int arguments.

-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.