REBOL3 - Profiling (Rebol code optimisation and algorithm comparisons. [web-public])

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#UserMessageDate
84Maximyeah amd with the faster fuunction calling in R3 liquid should get an immediate boost in speed... it does A LOT of tiny function calls to manage the graph as if they where first level types with accessors instead of using a controler which loops over the graphs and limits flexibility.31-Oct-09 3:24
83BrianHThe plus side is that what you would just do, before you try to optimize, tends to be faster in R3 than it is in R2.31-Oct-09 3:04
82BrianHCode converted from R2 to R3 tends to need reoptimizing - the balance of what is native vs what is mezz has changed, usually for the better. All of the loop functions are native now, for instance. Also, some natives have been converted to actions, and vice versa.31-Oct-09 3:01
81Maximwith the tests I did, I think I can probably optimise liquid by at least 20% just by changing the loops and changing none of the algorithms or features.

I am about to create a second reference liquid node type. which will be completely compatible from the outside, but with less features inside. I expect to DOUBLE its processing capacity.

31-Oct-09 2:51
80Maximyou learn a lot by doing it.31-Oct-09 2:48
79BrianHWith the typos fixed I hope :)31-Oct-09 2:48
78MaximI intend to devote a whole site to these tests eventually. with a very extensive and comprehensive set of test functions and statistics.31-Oct-09 2:48
77Maximbetter described than I would put it, but those where my assumptions... I will include this info in my next revision of the document.31-Oct-09 2:47
76BrianHFor instance, 1000 > i would be faster than i < 1000 because ops redirect to actions, and actions dispatch based on the type of their first argument. If the first argument is a literal value, the action of that type can be called directly. If it is a referenced value, it woulkd have to be dereferenced first, which is apparently slower.

As for PICK being faster than NOT TAIL?, that is one native compared to two, with interpreter overhead between the two. Low-level natives like PICK, NOT and TAIL? don't do much in comparison with the interpreter overhead. Large numbers of small operations tend to be slower than small numbers of large operations, if the amount of work done is comparable. This is why structure manipulation is faster in REBOL than simple math.

31-Oct-09 2:46
75Maximfor my 3D engine, this base line test was neccessary. I need to squeze every hz out of rebol... its nice to see how some exit conditions are 10-15% faster in some equivalebt tests... who would have tought that 'PICK was faster than NOT TAIL ? :-/31-Oct-09 2:40
74BrianHThanks for the info, Maxim. We can do a little deduction from that data to guess how REBOL is implemented. The scientific method :)31-Oct-09 2:37
73Maximupdated document.30-Oct-09 17:37
72Maximbut I did miscalculate the remove-each MB/second create/scan/erase cycle... its not 100MB... its 10MB.30-Oct-09 17:35
71Maximas indicated in the document introductions... the repeat test is:

loop ops [repeat i 1000 []]

so with 100000 ops taking near 2 seconds. we end up with:

100,000 * 1000 / 2 = (50 million loops / second)

30-Oct-09 17:26
70sqlabM: looks more like 50 thousands than 50 millions for repeat. So take care of your powers of 1030-Oct-09 17:22
69Maximin any case I want to build a single script which does all the tests, statistics, and eventually graphics and html pages of all results in one (VERY) long process. so I can better control how the tests are done and prevent automated test creation as I am doing now.30-Oct-09 16:58
68Maximnot sure I'm making sense... in how I explain it.30-Oct-09 16:57
67MaximI reduce a block which is the test... and since foreach copy/deep, and there is NO word ever refering to the content of the refered block, I think the contents of the blocks prevent the blocks and the data they contain from being collected...

the block contains words which are not GC counted as zero reference, so nothing gets de-allocated...

that's just my guess.

30-Oct-09 16:56
66Steeveyep, but your tests seem not having such cases30-Oct-09 16:53
65MaximI think R2 GC can't determine co-dependent unused references... in some situations. ex: blk: reduce [ a: context [b: none] b: context [c: a] a/b: b ] blk: none

in this case both a and b point to each other, and clearing blk doesn't tell a or b that they aren't used anymore... that is my guess.

30-Oct-09 16:53
64Steeveand if you activate recycle/on, does that make any difference ?30-Oct-09 16:51
63SteeveR3 is better with that30-Oct-09 16:49
62Steeveyes, i noticed that too, it's a probem with R230-Oct-09 16:49
61Maxim>> stats == 541502965 >> recycle >> stats == 272784493

but that's just for about 10 % of the tests... the more tests I do the more ram stays "stuck" somewhere inside the interpreter.

30-Oct-09 16:48
60Steevewhat do you mean ?, it does it here:

>> recycle s: stats loop 1000000 [foreach a [1 2 3][a: a]] print stats - s recycle print stats - s 1569504 ;memory allocated by the loop -320 ; after the recycle

30-Oct-09 16:46
59MaximI tried manually recycling... but it didn't do anything.30-Oct-09 16:39
58Maximthis will also have to be investigated further (the leak)30-Oct-09 16:38
57MaximI did note, that there is a HUGE memory leak which occured probably in the actual benchmark procedure itself.

although I keep no reference to any of the data or transient test blocks and funcs, they are kept somewhere, and my rebol.exe process keeps growing and growing.... I caught it at 500MB !! but it didn't do any difference in actual speeds... after a few tests.... cause i was a bit scared.

30-Oct-09 16:38
56Maximas noted in the document test notes: I specifically didn't do any GC control, cause I wanted, at this point, to see how the loops react under normal rebol execution. the GC normally is pretty aggressive and when you look at the tests, most loops roll for several hundred thousands times, so the GC will have kicked-in... if it can.30-Oct-09 16:35
55Maximthanks steeve, I'm accumulating all comments

First revision of the benchmarks will include: -RAM stats -empty vs filled-up loops. many words and a single func with the same content called from the loop -GC de-activated tests + recycle time stats

30-Oct-09 16:33
54Steevebut perhaps i'm wrong, you take it in account30-Oct-09 16:32
53SteeveYour bench doesn''t take in account the time taken by the GC to recycle the memory. Some functions polluate the memory some other not. You should add the time needed to recycle after each test.30-Oct-09 16:31
52SteeveA thing should be noted. repeat and foreach do a bind/copy of the evaluated block. Even if they are the fastest loops, they should be not used too intensivly because they will polluate the memory. It's particularly sensitive for graphics applications or services that linger in memory.

So, that's why I advise to use only LOOP, WHILE and UNTIL for intensive repeated loopings, if you don't want to blow up the memory used by your app.

30-Oct-09 16:25
51Maximwould *like*30-Oct-09 16:23
50MaximI would a few peer reviews so I can continue to evolve this document in order to make it as precise/usefull for everyone.30-Oct-09 16:22
49MaximSee who is the overall winner in this REBOL iterator slug fest analysis!!! over 8 hours of practically non-stop cpu cycling over a wide variety of exit conditions, datasets and ALL iterators in rebol 2 (loop, repeat, for, forever, foreach, remove-each, forskip, forall, while, until )

20 kb of data, statistics, comments and test details.

INVALUABLE data for people wanting to optimize their REBOL code.

http://www.pointillistic.com/open-REBOL/moa/scream/rebol-iterator-comparison.txt

30-Oct-09 15:51
48Maximwill be nice to do the same exercise on R330-Oct-09 14:38
47Maximprofiling almost done... my machine has been looping series and indexes non-stop for about 8 hours now :-)

be ready for the most in-depth analysis on loops ever done for R2 ;-)

30-Oct-09 14:38
46Maxim(i: i + 1) > 1000 same speed as i: i + 1 i > 100030-Oct-09 11:18
45Maximand its not because of the paren... I checked that....30-Oct-09 11:17
44Maxim1000 < i: i + 1 is 10% faster than (i: i + 1) > 100030-Oct-09 11:16
43Maximbut I'm discovering a lot of discrepancies in things like string vs block speed of certain loops... and a lot of other neat things like:

pick series 1

is 15% faster than

not tail? series

30-Oct-09 11:15
42Maximthe comment above about remove-each is false... it was a coding error.30-Oct-09 11:11
41GeomolYeah, there's often a huge difference between a mezzanine function and a native. In R2, FOR is mezz, REPEAT is native.30-Oct-09 11:09
40Maximdid you know that FOR is 60x ... let me write that out ... SIXTY TIMES slower than REPEAT !!!30-Oct-09 5:18
39Maximwow I'm already at 7kb of output text with notes and proper header ... I haven't done half the tests yet!30-Oct-09 5:17
38Maxim(probably exponentially faster as the series grows)30-Oct-09 1:29
37Maximand remove-each is 90 times faster if it always return true rather than false !30-Oct-09 1:29
36Maximthe main one being that foreach is actually the fastest series iterator!30-Oct-09 1:22
35MaximI'm doing an in-depth analysis of various looping funcs... and discovering some VERY unexpected results amongst the various tests... will report in a while when I'm done with the various loop use cases.30-Oct-09 1:20
34Maximsteeve, replied in (new) !SCARE group29-Oct-09 7:32
33Steevemaximum-of uses the func GREATER? in R3 To me it make sense, because in Rebol, blocks are really great ! :-)29-Oct-09 7:30
32SunandaIf you are trying to find the largest in a series of not-strictly comparable items, then be aware that R2 behaves differently to R3: b: reduce [1 none 12-jan-2005 unset 'a copy []] last sort b ;; r2 and r3 agree maximum-of b ;; r3 has a headache == [[]]29-Oct-09 7:13
31SteeveDo you use the skew command in draw ? or are you calculating the coordinates of your 3D objects for each layer. (I think SKEW allow to simulate isometric rendering in AGG, but it's just an assumption, i never tried it)29-Oct-09 7:10
30Maxim*3D*29-Oct-09 7:07
29MaximI'm working on isometric rendering of 3 polygonal gfx in AGG, so profiling is currently quite high on my list :-)29-Oct-09 7:06
28Maximbut I guess I could try using paths as the function argument... that actually might work too.29-Oct-09 7:05
27Maximso I can test functions with any number of args, as long as I don't use refinements, I'm ok.29-Oct-09 7:04
26Steeveok29-Oct-09 7:04
25Maximbut no, the way profile handles its second argument (here reduce [a]) is that it uses the second argumet AS the argument spec for the function...

loop i compose/only [ (:func) (args)]

so in the end, the test becomes:

loop i [maximum-of a]

29-Oct-09 7:03
24Maximhehe29-Oct-09 7:00
23Steevetired ?29-Oct-09 6:57
22Steeveactually, you are not sorting or traversing a long serie. >>reduce [a] == [[1 1 1 2 2 2 ...]]

your serie contains only one value.

i suggest to do a COPY A instead

29-Oct-09 6:56
21Maximbtw

'PROFILE is a handy function I built which accepts ANY function with ANY args and repeats the test until it takes longer than one second,

you can adjust its loop scaling by varying amplitude and magnitude of loops at each iteration.

'REPORT-TEST simply dumps human-readable and easy to compare stats of calls to profile (which returns a block of info on the test).

29-Oct-09 6:55
20Maximhere is a sreen dump of iteration vs maximum-of native use.... goes to show the speed difference in binary vs interpreted!!

>> a: [1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 10 10 10 110 110]

report-test profile :maximum-of reduce [a] ---------------- performed: 10000000 ops within 0:00:09.781 seconds. speed: 1022390.34863511 ops a second speed: 34079.678287837 ops a frame ----------------

>> report-test profile :get-largest reduce [a] ---------------- performed: 10000 ops within 0:00:01.86 seconds. speed: 5376.34408602151 ops a second speed: 179.21146953405 ops a frame ----------------

we are talking 190 TIMES faster here

29-Oct-09 6:52
19SteeveMoreover, maximum-of and minimum-of are probably the only ones functions faster with R2 than R3. In R3, they have been turned back into mezzanines (never understood why)29-Oct-09 6:51
18SteeveAh, you're requesting that the math operators apply on blocks of scalar (vectors). Old request. Never done in R2 and not yet in R329-Oct-09 6:47
17Maximis there an equivalent for sum?29-Oct-09 6:44
16Steevedunno ;-)29-Oct-09 6:43
15Maximthx.29-Oct-09 6:43
14Maximdarn ... how could I have missed that func for years!29-Oct-09 6:43
13SteeveFor R2 ? Abracadabra !!!! >> maximum-of29-Oct-09 6:38
12Maximany one know of a faster method than sorting a block to get the largest value inside of it?

in my tests... this: forall blk [ val: max val first blk]

is ~ five times SLOWER than this: last sort blk

29-Oct-09 4:49
11Maximneat :-)20-Sep-09 8:53
10Gabrielemy framework for tests and benchmarks will be released... eventually :)20-Sep-09 8:50
9SteeveGabriele, could be useful to build a GUI like yours to standardize our benchmarks.19-Sep-09 8:44
8Gabrielehttp://motoko.rebol.it/to-pair.png19-Sep-09 8:23
7BrianHAS-PAIR and TO-PAIR are mezzanine. Carl has mentioned wanting to make AS-PAIR native - sounds like a good candidate.17-Sep-09 18:51
6Maximprobably should add Rebol version and platform in any further profiling compilations... to make them even more usefull as a reference.17-Sep-09 8:30
5Maximinteger to pair convertion speed tests:

>> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [to-pair 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.547 >> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [1x1 * 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.219 >> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [to pair! 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.328 >> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [as-pair 2 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.937

17-Sep-09 8:28
4MaximI created this group, cause ever so often these experiments come around and we loose them... this should become a quick repository of tests & disussion for profiling discoveries we do.

any test should provide the full test command-line code, so its easier for other to copy-paste & compare without having to re-type.

ever so often, a compilation should be done, highlighted in a different color for easy referral...

17-Sep-09 8:25
3SunandaAnd as-pair [2 2] is significantly slower than either. Nice tuning experiment! There will be other surprises too, I'm sure.17-Sep-09 8:21
2GeomolAnd this comes in between: to pair! 217-Sep-09 8:19
1Maximinteresting for those who didn't know, same result, but 2.5 times faster :

>> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [to-pair 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.547 >> s: now/precise loop 1000000 [1x1 * 2] print difference now/precise s 0:00:00.219

17-Sep-09 8:11

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