One more clarification: to avoid allocation of HeapNumbers (and therefore
GC) in existing V8 versions, it's not necessary to re-write the app using
Float64Arrays -- just using regular JavaScript Arrays is enough (e.g.:
"this.position = [x, y, z];"). As long as there are only numbers in the
array, V8 will detect this and store the numbers in unboxed form.


On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Toon Verwaest <[email protected]>wrote:

> There's work in progress to solve this issue. Stay tuned ;)
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Ben Noordhuis <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Andrei Kashcha <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>> > Recently I've been profiling a lot v8's garbage collection. Surprising
>> truth
>> > is it's really slow when JS program does heavy computation. For example,
>> > consider a straightforward n-body computation for 5 bodies, over 50 000
>> 000
>> > iterations [1].
>> >
>> > When running this program in d8:
>> >
>> >> time ./d8 ./nbody_plain_objects.js -- 50000000
>> > -0.169075164
>> > -0.169059907
>> > ./d8 ./nbody_plain_objects.js -- 50000000  46.95s user 0.07s system 99%
>> cpu
>> > 47.036 total
>> >
>> > Now compare the same results with Mozilla's SpiderMonkey shell [2]:
>> >
>> >> time ./js ./nbody_plain_objects.js 50000000
>> > -0.169075164
>> > -0.169059907
>> > ./js ./nbody_plain_objects.js 50000000  20.27s user 0.02s system 99% cpu
>> > 20.288 total
>> >
>> > SpiderMonkey is more than two times faster! Why? Turns out V8 produces
>> a lot
>> > of numbers on the heap, when using plain javascript objects:
>> >
>> >  function Body(x,y,...) {
>> >       this.X = x;
>> >       this.Y = y; ...
>> >
>> > }
>> >
>> > This creates lots of garbage and slows down performance of the algorithm
>> > significantly. The garbage collection could be avoided in V8, if
>> program is
>> > rewritten with use of Float64Arrays, and manual implementation of
>> heap-like
>> > structure. Doing so [3], puts v8 on the same speed level with
>> SpiderMonkey:
>> >
>> >> time ./d8 ./nbody_array.js -- 50000000
>> > -0.169075164
>> > -0.169059907
>> > ./d8 ./nbody_array.js -- 50000000  21.45s user 0.02s system 99% cpu
>> 21.487
>> > total
>> >
>> > SpiderMonkey insignificantly suffers, but still shows decent results:
>> >> time ./js ./nbody_array.js 50000000
>> > -0.169075164
>> > -0.169059907
>> > ./js ./nbody_array.js 50000000  23.73s user 0.02s system 99% cpu 23.749
>> > total
>> >
>> > I definitely could rewrite my programs with use of native arrays, but I
>> > don't really think this scales well for the larger audience of
>> programmers,
>> > who are doing calculus in JS. Maybe I'm missing a technique which would
>> let
>> > me avoid GCs at all, with no need to rewrite programs? I would also
>> like to
>> > avoid imposing on my users a need to launch chrome (v8) with a special
>> > flags...
>> >
>> > PS: All tests are done on MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz, Intel Core i5, with
>> latest
>> > x64.release build of V8, and latest nightly build of SpiderMonkey [2].
>> >
>> > [1] https://gist.github.com/anvaka/5438615
>> > [2]
>> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/
>> > [3] https://gist.github.com/anvaka/5438702
>>
>> That's because in V8 floating point numbers are (mostly) heap
>> allocated while SM uses NaN tagging (though it calls it nun boxing, I
>> believe.)
>>
>> If you run your benchmarks with integral types instead, I'll bet good
>> money that V8 comes out on top.
>>
>>

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