[self-interest] Performance?

[Michael Latta]

As Jecel pointed out, we are not trying to find out how "good" self is. 
  The VM technology is clearly newer/better.

It all started when I did some bad math in my head and thought that 
Squeak was running 1000 cycles / bytecode.  The actual
numbers are much more reasonable (8 / bytecode or so).  Then I asked if 
the same benchmarks could be run in Self to compare
them on my machine.

Having just got back from JavaOne I have a related question.  Is the 
HotSpot VM faster than Self?  I will probably try recoding it in java 
just
for curiosity sake.  It sure is hard to look at the success of Java and 
hold out for the Smalltalk/Self language and environment.  It is 
however the things
that Java left out from these languages and environments that make them 
so much more productive and enjoyable to work in.  Even the best Java 
IDEs
with some code replacement features, are no where close to the fluidity 
of the "older" environments.  The Java VMs only allow live replacement 
if you are
not adding/removing methods or fields!  Talk about user visible 
discontinuity.  What we need is a commercially usable VM that runs 
Self/Smalltalk and can
interoperate with Java (through SOAP?).

Michael



On Jul 2, 2004, at 3:01 PM, David Ungar wrote:

> What benchmarks are you running?
> I believe that bytecodes/sec can be a meaningless figure.
> Remember that in Smalltalk bitblt is one bytecode, and local variable
> access is one bytecode.
>
> When we did our benchmarking work, we took a (then) medium-sized
> program, Richards,
> and wrote it in optimized C++, and in several different styles in Self,
> varying in amount
> of object-orientedness.
>
> Remember, that in a Self-style VM, sends to self of messages whose
> method bodies are small are free.
> Also, custom control structures you build run just as fast as ifTrue:
> while:, etc.
> Last time I looked, this was not true in Smalltalk VMs. So, if your
> benchmark uses a control structure
> that the ST compiler happens to replace with branch bytecodes, you do
> OK.
> But if not, you lose. I don't know if it is still true, but in ST-80,
> folks used to distort their code
> to use the "good" control structures.
>
> - David
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 2, 2004, at 10:28 AM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr wrote:
>
>> On Thursday 01 July 2004 23:11, Michael Latta wrote:
>>> It looks like the compiler on the Mac is not as good as that for the
>>> Sparc.  On my 1Ghz powerbook I got the following:
>>>
>>> 47,058,823 bytecodes/sec and 17,247,597 sends/sec
>>>
>>> which is a lot less than the 277Mhz sparc for bytecodes, but
>>> competitive on sends.  Still not what you want when comparing to
>>> hardware with 1/4 the clock rate.
>>
>> Is this a G4? I'll see what numbers I get on 1GHz G4 eMac the next 
>> time
>> I get to use that machine. I suppose you are using the latest version 
>> -
>> Self on the Mac didn't have the SIC (simple inlining compiler) before
>> 4.2 and didn't even have PICs (polymorphic inline caches) before 
>> 4.1.6.
>>
>> <http://research.sun.com/self/release_4.2/Self-4.2.1/Self-4.2.1-
>> Release-Notes.pdf>
>>
>> It seems that the compilers have been improved for the Sparc. Here are
>> more numbers on that same machine:
>>
>> Self 4.0 =>  60,150,375 bytecodes/sec; 5,845,070 sends/sec
>> Self 4.1 =>  78,527,607 bytecodes/sec; 15,404,782 sends/sec
>>
>> You might also want to run the benchmarks several times. Here are the
>> first ten runs in Self 4.1.1 on the Ultra:
>>
>>   75,029,308 bytecodes/sec; 16,746,759 sends/sec
>>   74,116,965 bytecodes/sec; 16,915,608 sends/sec
>>   69,678,824 bytecodes/sec; 16,492,340 sends/sec
>>   72,480,181 bytecodes/sec; 16,946,674 sends/sec
>>   97,116,843 bytecodes/sec; 16,962,250 sends/sec
>>  100,078,186 bytecodes/sec; 16,993,488 sends/sec
>>  101,910,858 bytecodes/sec; 16,962,250 sends/sec
>>  101,185,770 bytecodes/sec; 16,977,855 sends/sec
>>  101,105,845 bytecodes/sec; 17,024,842 sends/sec
>>   85,106,382 bytecodes/sec; 17,087,897 sends/sec
>>
>> Please note that these are bad benchmarks for Squeak, and even worse
>> for
>> Self (the moral equivalent of BogoMIPS in Linux). For a serious
>> comparison we should be using DeltaBlue, Richards and so on.
>>
>>> Now I need to run the same thing on Squeak to compare on the same
>>> hardware.  Could you point me at the squeak expression?
>>
>>    0 tinyBenchmarks
>>
>> -- Jecel
>>
>>
>>
>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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