[squeak-dev] The Trunk: System-codefrau.1205.mcz

David T. Lewis lewis at mail.msen.com
Tue Dec 22 21:18:46 UTC 2020


On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 12:55:32PM -0500, David T. Lewis wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 01:08:28AM -0800, Eliot Miranda wrote:
> > Hi Vanessa, Hi Fabio, Hi David, Hi All,
> > 
> > > On Dec 20, 2020, at 10:24 PM, commits at source.squeak.org wrote:
> > > 
> > > ???Vanessa Freudenberg uploaded a new version of System to project The Trunk:
> > > http://source.squeak.org/trunk/System-codefrau.1205.mcz
> > > 
> > > ==================== Summary ====================
> > > 
> > > Name: System-codefrau.1205
> > > Author: codefrau
> > > Time: 20 December 2020, 10:23:10.790782 pm
> > > UUID: f94486f3-3743-4300-a495-c2a89089e122
> > > Ancestors: System-dtl.1204
> > > 
> > > Update platformName for SqueakJS 1.0
> > > 
> > > =============== Diff against System-dtl.1204 ===============
> > > 
> > > Item was changed:
> > >  ----- Method: SmalltalkImage>>isLowerPerformance (in category 'system attributes') -----
> > >  isLowerPerformance
> > >      "Some operations - TestCases for example - need an idea of the typical performance of the system on which they are being performed. For now we will simply assert that running on an ARM cpu or as a SqueakJS instance is enough of a discriminator. Options for the future might also involve whether the vm is a full Cog or Sisata system, even actually measuring the performance at some point to be sure"
> > >      ^ (self platformSubtype beginsWith: 'arm') "Raspberry PI for example"
> > > +        or: [self platformName = 'JS'] "SqueakJS"!
> > > -        or: [self platformName = 'Web'] "SqueakJS"!
> > 
> > this is interesting.  The method is do crude, but potentially we have a much more rational basis upon which to derive its result.  I would expect the effective performance to be the product of processor speed (mips), core execution engine architecture and object representation.
> > 
> > Mips varies hugely across the range from eg Raspberry Pi 2,3,4 to various Intel (i5,I7,i9 etc) and Apple Silicon.  The range here is about one order of magnitude.
> > 
> > Execution architecture varies from pure context interpreter (the BTTF VM), Stack Interpreter, Squeak JS interpreter, Squeak JS generation one JIT, Squeak JS subsequent generation JITs (temps in JS vars, sends mapped to JS calls), Cog JIT, Sista JIT.
> > 
> > Very crudely Spur = 2 x v3 (actually about 1.7 and varies according to workflow).
> > 
> > Of the execution architectures Sista JIT is for practical purposes not yet implemented, a prototype, but may offer 2x to 4x of Cog.  Of the Squeak JS JITs I think that the send mapping isn???t implemented (am I right?).  But is the temp var mapping implemented? If so what difference does it make?  Context to Stack is about 1.5. Stack to Cog is about 6.
> > 
> > So the notion is that if we can come up with crude numbers that rank the execution architectures and a measure of mips we can compute a meaningful numeric estimate of likely Smalltalk execution speed and answer isLowerPerformance if this number falls below a specific threshold.  What we have now based on platformName is simply wrong.  eg a Raspberry Pi 4 is way faster than a Pi 3.
> > 
> > One thing I did for visual works is estimate processor mips by timing the first invocation of the allInstances primitive and dividing by the number of objects. Basically the heuristic is that mips is roughly (inversely) proportional to how much time per object the first allInstances invocation spends.  There is (almost) always an allInstances invocation at startup in VisualWorks (to clear font handles IIRC), and there may be in a Squeak image.  Alternatives are measuring how long it takes to load and/or swizzle the image on load divided by the heap size.  Basically we have the opportunity to introspection at startup cheaply measuring the time some costly primitive takes to run and this result can be cached, accessed via a primitive or vmParameter and perhaps updated as execution proceeds.
> > 
> > Does this sound like overkill? If not, what should we choose as our mips measurer?  We want something that all VMs have to do somewhat similarly fairly early on system startup and we can correlate with stopwatches and macro benchmarks like the time taken for the Compiler package to recompile itself, etc.
> >
> 
> Not overkill at all, I think it's a good idea. There are currently only two
> use cases for isLowerPerformance, and in both cases it looks like something
> that could be computed on demand when first referenced after image startup.
> 

I put System-dtl.1207 in the inbox as a possible solution. Treat it as
a bikeshed in need of a good coat of paint.

Dave



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