WebAssembly / WebAssembly/binaryen

Make compilation faster :rocket:

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Description

I did some investigation on the speed of compilation. This is getting important because of things like j2cl output which is a 50MB real-world file.

Slowest passes: (in -O3; note that some passes run more than once)

[PassRunner]   running pass: precompute-propagate...           14.23460 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: dae...                            10.91160 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: heap2local...                     10.44350 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: precompute-propagate...            9.07261 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: inlining...                        8.02837 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: once-reduction...                  8.02484 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: vacuum...                          5.16162 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: vacuum...                          3.64088 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: vacuum...                          3.58191 seconds.
[PassRunner]   running pass: vacuum...                          3.61897 seconds.

perf reports almost 15% of time is spent in malloc/free methods - quite a lot. I counted how many mallocs (note: not the size of them) are done in each pass, here are the heaviest (note: timings here include the overhead of counting mallocs atomically among threads, so those matter less):

    once-reduction...                 9.51466 seconds.  141558196 mallocs. 
    precompute-propagate...           14.7426 seconds.   61611533 mallocs. 
    dae...                            11.3789 seconds.   53792948 mallocs. 
    precompute-propagate...           9.69919 seconds.   39531493 mallocs. 
    heap2local...                     10.5116 seconds.   38582302 mallocs. 
    local-cse...                      4.70765 seconds.   33454468 mallocs. 
    cfp...                            2.43619 seconds.   32292682 mallocs. 
    ssa-nomerge...                    4.92099 seconds.   26378117 mallocs. 
    simplify-locals-nostructure...    6.03281 seconds.   22663794 mallocs. 
    vacuum...                         5.10813 seconds.   23880789 mallocs. 
    inlining...                       107.781 seconds.   20940365 mallocs. 
    dce...                            3.84722 seconds.   20025273 mallocs. 
    local-subtyping...                3.44374 seconds.   19067529 mallocs. 

and vacuum runs 3 more times:

    vacuum...                         3.71648 seconds.   16648663 mallocs. 
    vacuum...                         3.86917 seconds.   16302767 mallocs. 
    vacuum...                         3.89855 seconds.   16162915 mallocs. 

Help in speeding things up would be very welcome!

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

The issue provides -O3 timing and malloc counts for passes including once-reduction, precompute-propagate, dae, heap2local, inlining, and vacuum, but names no files or tests. Start by reproducing the measurements on the 50MB j2cl output and profiling those passes; done means a documented, measurable reduction in compilation time.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, wasm
Domain
compilers, performance
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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