patchGNU Octave - Patches: patch #10139, interpreter: static instead of...

 
 

patch #10139: interpreter: static instead of dynamic casts for speed

Submitter:  Petter <petter>
Submitted:  Sun 21 Nov 2021 04:56:21 PM UTC
   
 
Category:  Core : other Priority:  5 - Normal
Status:  Duplicate Privacy:  Public
Assigned to:  None Open/Closed:  Closed
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Thu 02 Mar 2023 03:20:10 PM UTC, comment #3: 

Closing because I believe these changes were addressed in patch #10226.

John W. Eaton <jwe>
Group administrator
Wed 30 Mar 2022 09:29:27 PM UTC, comment #2: 

Ye maybe it could flip from default dynamic to static in a major release or something. dynamic_cast is surprisingly slow.

I don't think lib users depend on the bad_cast exception, since typeid need to be messed up somehow for the octave_value object to make the lookup get the wrong functions (I think).

I look into your feedback at some point.

I've done a lot of similar speedup patches as a byproduct of a try to make a stack based interpreter for Octave. Some might be interesting to look at but I believe a lot breaks lib ABI.

https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?10167

Petter <petter>
Sun 13 Mar 2022 06:20:22 PM UTC, comment #1: 

Sorry for taking so long for coming around to this.

This is definitely interesting. I'm not 100% sure if a static_cast will always be safe. But that seems to be the case afaict (at least for Octave's own codebase).
And I like the approach of optionally turning the "dynamic_cast" back on.

Just a minor comment: Should the new macro be renamed from DYNORSTAT_CAST to something like OCTAVE_OBV_CAST to avoid potential clashes of the macro name when the `ops.h` header is included in downstream projects?
IIUC, these casts are all between types that are derived from `octave_base_value`. Hence, the "OBV" in the proposed macro name.
But other names are also ok as long as they start with "OCTAVE_" - I guess.

Also: Should the configure switch apply to downstream projects that include `ops.h`? In that case, OCTAVE_ENABLE_INTERNAL_CHECKS should probably also be included in `oct-conf-post-public.in.h`.
Alternatively, we could default to `dynamic_cast` for user code if we are uncertain what could happen downstream. Perhaps with the option to explicitly switch to `static_cast` by passing `-DOCTAVE_NO_INTERNAL_CHECKS` or something similar...

I'm attaching an updated patch that applies on the current default branch.


(file #52986)

Markus Mützel <mmuetzel>
Group administrator
Sun 21 Nov 2021 04:56:21 PM UTC, original submission:  

Hi!

I've made a patch trying to speed up the interpreter by replacing dynamic_cast with static_cast.

I added a configure flag "--enable-internal-checks" which could be used to enable expensive runtime checks.

In ops.h I added a macro DYNORSTAT_CAST that is static_cast by default and dynamic_cast if Octave is built with "internal-checks".

In the operator cc-files a changed all the dynamic_cast of references to DYNORSTAT_CAST.

As I understand the code, the objects used by the operators are not supposed to be of the wrong kind. A std::bad_cast is thrown currently which terminates Octave, if that is the case, but with this patch any type error would silently corrupt memory etc.

For scalar heavy code with many ops the speedup is quite substantial. E.g. some silly:


function i = foo ()
        tic;
        for i = 1:10e6
                i = 0.5 * i / 0.9 + 1 - 8;
        end
        toc;
end


Has a speedup of about 15% on my machine.

Petter <petter>

 

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Attached Files
file #52315:  staticcast_tomner.patch added by petter (231KiB - text/x-patch)

 

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    Follow 7 latest changes.

    Date Changed by Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced by
    2023-03-02 jwe StatusIn Progress Duplicate
        Open/ClosedOpen Closed
    2022-03-13 mmuetzel Attached File- Added patch10139-staticcast_tomner-v2.patch, #52986
        StatusNone In Progress
    2022-03-07 mmuetzel Dependencies- bugs #62146 is dependent
    2021-12-21 siko1056 Carbon-Copy- Added siko1056
    2021-11-21 petter Attached File- Added staticcast_tomner.patch, #52315

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