Re: Serious performance issues with 1.9.0

[Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk>]

On Thursday 16 Jul 2009 08:59, Neil Jerram wrote:
> Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> writes:
> > Running a test program on Guile 1.8.7 takes 100 seconds CPU time.
> > On Guile 1.9.0 (beta) the same program takes 237 seconds CPU time!
>
> I wonder if that's because the code is being auto-compiled?  Do you
> get a better result if you set environment variable GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE
> to 0 ?

This is with Guile 1.9.1, running on a slightly different program:

GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE 1 takes 204 seconds
GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE 0 takes 213 seconds

The only file in ~/.cache is guile-1.9.1/test-suite/lib.scm.go

Guile 1.8.7 takes 81 seconds on this example.

SCM 5e5 takes 18 seconds.
Hobbit-compiled code: less than 1 second.

> > For comparison:
> >
> > Gambit v4.4.4 takes 60 seconds.
> > SCM version 5e5 takes 20.7 seconds.
>
> We're working on it!
>
> > Hobbit compiled code running under SCM takes 1.1 seconds!
> >
> > There was some talk a few years ago about integrating the Hobbit
> > compiler with Guile: but nothing seems to have come of it.
>
> No, that line of work fizzled out.  It may come back again in the more
> general compilation and language transformation framework that we now
> have.

If guile is intended to be a "proper" language: suitable for production use
and not just for playing with toy programs, then a decent compiler
is essential.

I had to hack hobbit just to get separate compilation to work!

-- 
			Martin

martin@gkc.org.uk http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/ Erdos number: 4
G.K.Chesterton web site: http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/