Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/events/245288287/

LDC[1], the LLVM-based D compiler, has been adding Link Time Optimization capabilities over the last several releases. [...]

This talk will look at the results of applying LTO to one set of applications, eBay's TSV utilities[2]. [...]

Jon Degenhardt is a member of eBay's Search Science team.
[...] D quickly became his favorite programming language, one he uses whenever he can.

Ali

[1] https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc#ldc--the-llvm-based-d-compiler

[2] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/

Reminder...

On 11/21/2017 11:58 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/events/245288287/
> 
> LDC[1], the LLVM-based D compiler, has been adding Link Time Optimization capabilities over the last several releases. [...]
> 
> This talk will look at the results of applying LTO to one set of applications, eBay's TSV utilities[2]. [...]
> 
> Jon Degenhardt is a member of eBay's Search Science team.
> [...] D quickly became his favorite programming language, one he uses whenever he can.
> 
> Ali
> 
> [1] https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc#ldc--the-llvm-based-d-compiler
> 
> [2] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/

This should be live now:

  http://youtu.be/e05QvoKy_8k

Ali

On 11/21/2017 11:58 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:

> Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/events/245288287/
> 
> LDC[1], the LLVM-based D compiler, has been adding Link Time Optimization capabilities over the last several releases. [...]
> 
> This talk will look at the results of applying LTO to one set of applications, eBay's TSV utilities[2]. [...]
> 
> Jon Degenhardt is a member of eBay's Search Science team.
> [...] D quickly became his favorite programming language, one he uses whenever he can.
> 
> Ali
> 
> [1] https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc#ldc--the-llvm-based-d-compiler
> 
> [2] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/

On Friday, 15 December 2017 at 03:08:35 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> This should be live now:
>
>   http://youtu.be/e05QvoKy_8k
>
> Ali
>
> On 11/21/2017 11:58 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>
>> Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/events/245288287/
>> 
>> LDC[1], the LLVM-based D compiler, has been adding Link Time Optimization capabilities over the last several releases. [...]
>> 
>> This talk will look at the results of applying LTO to one set of applications, eBay's TSV utilities[2]. [...]
>> 
>> Jon Degenhardt is a member of eBay's Search Science team.
>> [...] D quickly became his favorite programming language, one he uses whenever he can.
>> 
>> Ali
>> 
>> [1] https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc#ldc--the-llvm-based-d-compiler
>> 
>> [2] https://dlang.org/blog/2017/05/24/faster-command-line-tools-in-d/

Slides from the talk: https://github.com/eBay/tsv-utils-dlang/blob/master/docs/dlang-meetup-14dec2017.pdf

> On 11/21/2017 11:58 AM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>
>> Meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/D-Lang-Silicon-Valley/events/245288287/
>> 
>> LDC[1], the LLVM-based D compiler, has been adding Link Time Optimization capabilities over the last several releases. [...]
>> 
>> This talk will look at the results of applying LTO to one set of applications, eBay's TSV utilities[2]. [...]
>> 
>> Jon Degenhardt is a member of eBay's Search Science team.
>> [...] D quickly became his favorite programming language, one he uses whenever he can.

On Friday, 15 December 2017 at 03:08:35 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> This should be live now:
>
>   http://youtu.be/e05QvoKy_8k

Great! I've added some comments there, pasted here:

Jon, thanks for the extensive talk and testing on LTO!
And thanks for recording / broadcasting :-)

(times are approximate)

7:45  Full vs Thin LTO further clarification: Full LTO is single threaded optimization and codegen (comparable with putting all source in one module). Thin LTO loads each module separately and imports functions it needs from other modules, then after the optimization and codegen happen in parallel for each module (and normal linking happens afterwards). LTO's capabilities stem from having access to functions' source code of other modules, and knowing which functions are internal to the program (so that they can be removed, non-ABI-conformant calling convention, etc., also discussed around 41:30); the importing+optim that happens at the start of Thin LTO gives you that, with the added advantage of parallel optim+codegen afterwards.

14:00  If the question was: do you need all libraries to be in IR: no. LTO works with mixed IR-object files and normal object files and libraries. Even if linking with non-IR libraries, it helps to know that no other object file references a symbol (so you can internalize it and generate better code). But indeed, for _much_ better optimization potential: the more source you have compiled with LTO enabled the better.

15:30  Whole source optimization at D-level has indeed higher potential; at the moment I don't think we do many optimizations that are only possible at D-level (and so they are done at IR level; or not at all... I'm working e.g. on devirtualization). Extra remark: the first step towards that is much deeper and well-defined spec of D semantics, in abstract machine terms.

15:45  Testing == contributing! And you're testing has greatly improved LDC's LTO, thanks!

15:50  The ldc-build-runtime tool was made by Martin Kinkelin, and as you mention it is the enabler for most of your work.

16:15  LDC LTO Windows == integrating LLD into LDC (or using lld-link.exe), https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/issues/2028

~30:00 IIRC, the performance regression is due to cross-module inlining/optim (as you mention), which we get for free with LTO :-)   (that is not to say that we wouldn't like to do cross-module inlining without LTO)

33:20  Compilation time. LTO skips machine codegen during the normal compilation, as machine codegen is done in the LTO linking step. So the slowdown with Thin LTO may not be too much (Thin LTO being a parallel build). An extreme case where LTO may actually result in faster codegen: if you have 1 million template function instantiations in CTFE, but they are not called during runtime, LTO may easily discard them before they reach the optimization and machine codegen stage. In such a case, LTO may very well be faster (optimized machine codegen is time consuming); however, the IR does have to be created and written to disk, and then read from disk, that takes time too... Overall, Thin LTO is slower than a normal `-O3` build, but only by a small ratio, but it also does more work (the added optimization). The compile speed difference between Full LTO and Thin LTO is very large (Full LTO is several times slower).

39:40  Indeed, D doesn't require codegen of templates if we can prove that it is already codegenned in the library itself: i.e. you _have_ to _link_ with a template-only library. In C++, codegen of templates is mandatory (afaik), and thus you do not have to link with a template-only library (e.g. headers files only). In D, this culling of template codegen is done to increase compile speed; in that sense not a fair comparison with C++. For cross-module inlining / inlining of templated functions: in C++ all template code is available in each codegenned module, so LTO is not needed to improve things; in D, using LTO makes template code available that otherwise wouldn't ---> larger (potentially much larger) relative gains with LTO for D.  (this is somewhat particular to LDC currently; GDC does better cross-module inlining; try LDC's `-enable-cross-module-inlining`)

56:40 Fully share your thinking that cross-module inlining is the main source of performance gains

Can't wait to see the results of LTO on Weka.io's (LARGE) applications. Work in progress...!

Could you add the reference links in the comment section there too? (can't click on blue links in the video ;-)

Clearly very interested in what your PGO testing will show. :-)

Cheers,
  Johan

On Saturday, 16 December 2017 at 11:52:37 UTC, Johan Engelen wrote:
> On Friday, 15 December 2017 at 03:08:35 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>> This should be live now:
>>
>>   http://youtu.be/e05QvoKy_8k
>
> Great! I've added some comments there, pasted here:

Fantastic feedback! Fills in some really important details.

> Can't wait to see the results of LTO on Weka.io's (LARGE) applications. Work in progress...!

Agreed. It'd be great to see the experience of a few more apps.

> Could you add the reference links in the comment section there too? (can't click on blue links in the video ;-)

Done. Thanks for pointing this out. I also updated the posted slide deck so that the hyperlinks work after downloading it. (They still aren't clickable in the GitHub inline viewer.)

> Clearly very interested in what your PGO testing will show. :-)

Yes, should be interesting. Promising results in one benchmark. And sigh, I forgot to mention the opportunity you mentioned for someone to participate: Adding LLVM's IR-level PGO to the LDC compiler. Sounds pretty cool.

On Saturday, 16 December 2017 at 11:52:37 UTC, Johan Engelen wrote:
> Clearly very interested in what your PGO testing will show. :-)

Early returns on adding PGO on top of LTO (first five benchmarks in the slide deck, tsv-join not tested):
* Two meaningful improvements:
  - csv2tsv: Linux: 8%; macOS: 33%
  - tsv-summarize: Linux: 6%; macOS: 11%
* Minor improvements on the other three benchmarks (< 5%)

Overall, for LDC 1.5, the improvements going from a normal optimized build to one combining LTO and PGO ranged from on 8-45% Linux, and 6-57% on macOS. (First five benchmarks, excluding tsv-join). Impressive!

--Jon

On Saturday, 16 December 2017 at 19:40:14 UTC, Jon Degenhardt wrote:
> On Saturday, 16 December 2017 at 11:52:37 UTC, Johan Engelen wrote:
>>
>> Can't wait to see the results of LTO on Weka.io's (LARGE) applications. Work in progress...!
>
> Agreed. It'd be great to see the experience of a few more apps.

Don't have performance numbers yet. But the executable size of the release build with ThinLTO drops to a third of the non-LTO executable size...!!! 809 MB to 250 MB.
(That's without an LTO build of druntime/Phobos.)

-Johan