[squeak-dev] Squeak VM Speed Centre - validity and basis of improvements 5 Dec

Ben Coman btc at openinworld.com
Sun Dec 25 13:12:52 UTC 2016


On Sat, Dec 24, 2016 at 8:13 PM, Tim Felgentreff
<timfelgentreff at gmail.com> wrote:
>We run benchmarks every day on
> http://speed.squeak.org/.

Reviewing at the timeline   http://speed.squeak.org/timeline/
I am curious about some of the performance improvements.

Several significant improvements seem aligned with Cog commit 2016120519
for example AStar...
http://speed.squeak.org/timeline/#/?exe=2,4,1,5,6,7,8,9&ben=AStar&env=2&revs=50&equid=off&quarts=on&extr=on

which seems to be "Merge pull request #105 from estebanlm/Cog"
https://github.com/OpenSmalltalk/opensmalltalk-vm/network

But then also aligned with the same Cog commit, there is a
corresponding improvement in the rsqueak performance, for example
ArrayAccess...
http://speed.squeak.org/timeline/#/?exe=2,4,1,5,6,7,8,9&ben=ArrayAccess&env=2&revs=50&equid=off&quarts=on&extr=on

...which seems to indicate a common cause from an in-Image
improvement, for which between 2016120322 and 2016120519 I see "The
various scanFor: and scanForEmptySlotFor: implementations only need to
access the size of their array once."
* Trunk: Kernel-eem.1050.mcz  (MethodDictionary)
   http://forum.world.st/The-Trunk-Kernel-eem-1050-mcz-td4925618.html
* Trunk: System-eem.920.mcz (SystemDictionary)
   http://forum.world.st/The-Trunk-System-eem-920-mcz-td4925619.html


So I'm curious do the benchmarks track both Image and VM changes?
Perhaps it would be useful to also benchmark Pharo to control for
Image changes (now that its returned to the fold using the mainline
opensmalltalk-vm)

Now I'm further curious, the benchmarks below see a massive jump down
for 2016120519 for all data series, but all results are relatively
very close to zero, so I wonder are these valid results?
  ByteStringHash
  ClassVarBinding
  Compiler
  EqualBytes
  Fib
  FillArray
  FillByteArray
  FillString
  Graphsearch
  HashBytes
  HashWords
  InstVarAccess
  IntLoop
  IntegerByteCodes
  ModularConvolutionBytes
  ModularConvolutionWords
  ModularDotProductBytes
  ModularDotProductWords
  ModularSumBytes
  ModularSumWords
  PermutationCompositionArray
  PermutationCompositionWords
  Richards
  Send
  SendPrimitive
  SendWithManyArguments
  Slopstone
  WideStringHash

Here all series jump down, and the result range seems valid...
  FloatLoop

Here all series jump, and the result range seems valid. Rsqueak improves more...
  ShootoutSpectraNorm

Here cog32, cog64 & rsqueakvm32 have a small jump down, but its is
very close to zero, so are they valid?  rsqueakvm64 shows no change...
  Blowfish

Here only Cog jumps down, RSqueak stays much higher, seems valid..
  OrderedCollectionRandomInsert
  Nbody

Here only Cog jumps down, RSqueak being already pretty low. The
results seem valid
  AStar
  ArrayAccess
  BinaryTree
  BitBltExampleOne
  DeltaBlue
  DoesNotUnderstand
  Json
  Mandala
  MandelbrotIterative1Thread
  MandelbrotIterative2Thread
  MandelbrotIterative4Thread
  MandelbrotIterative8Thread
  MandelbrotRecursive1Thread
  MandelbrotRecursive2Thread
  MandelbrotRecursive4Thread
  MandelbrotRecursive8Thread
  OrderedCollectionInsertFirst

Here only Cog jumps down, Rsqueak is unchanged or not present, seems valid...
  Smopstone
  SplayTree
  ToolInteraction

Here only cog32 jumps down, cog64, rsqueakvm32 & rsqueakvm64 no
change, seems valid...
  Fannkuck

Here RSqueak improves, Cog stays the same, seems valid...
  ShootoutMandelbrot3
  ShootoutNBody

The follow have no significant change around 5 Dec...
  BitBltColorMapping  - all already low
  DSAGen - all already low
  KMeans
  LRUCachePrintString
  Mandelbrot
  Polymorphy
  RaiseToLargeNumber
  RenderFont
  ShaLongString
  ShootoutBinarytrees
  ShootoutChameneosRedux
  ShootoutFannkuchRedux
  ShootoutFasta
  ShootoutFastaRedux
  ShootoutKnucleotide
  ShootoutMeteor
  ShootoutPidigits
  ShootoutRegexDNA
  ShootoutReverseComplement
  ShootoutThreadring


I also see around that time on 2 Dec Fabio says "I have fixed the
Squeak-trunk pipeline and we finally get daily updates again." So
maybe there were suddenly a bundle of improvements that showed up in
one go - but it seems the 2016120322 build should have picked those up
and didn't.
http://forum.world.st/Squeak-trunk-images-td4925570.html


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