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
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- 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