Copyright | (c) 2009-2014 Bryan O'Sullivan |
---|---|
License | BSD-style |
Maintainer | bos@serpentine.com |
Stability | experimental |
Portability | GHC |
Safe Haskell | None |
Language | Haskell2010 |
Constructing and running benchmarks.
- data Benchmarkable = NFData a => Benchmarkable {}
- toBenchmarkable :: (Int64 -> IO ()) -> Benchmarkable
- nfIO :: NFData a => IO a -> Benchmarkable
- whnfIO :: IO a -> Benchmarkable
- nf :: NFData b => (a -> b) -> a -> Benchmarkable
- whnf :: (a -> b) -> a -> Benchmarkable
- perBatchEnv :: (NFData env, NFData b) => (Int64 -> IO env) -> (env -> IO b) -> Benchmarkable
- perBatchEnvWithCleanup :: (NFData env, NFData b) => (Int64 -> IO env) -> (Int64 -> env -> IO ()) -> (env -> IO b) -> Benchmarkable
- perRunEnv :: (NFData env, NFData b) => IO env -> (env -> IO b) -> Benchmarkable
- perRunEnvWithCleanup :: (NFData env, NFData b) => IO env -> (env -> IO ()) -> (env -> IO b) -> Benchmarkable
- data Benchmark where
- Environment :: NFData env => IO env -> (env -> IO a) -> (env -> Benchmark) -> Benchmark
- Benchmark :: String -> Benchmarkable -> Benchmark
- BenchGroup :: String -> [Benchmark] -> Benchmark
- bench :: String -> Benchmarkable -> Benchmark
- bgroup :: String -> [Benchmark] -> Benchmark
- env :: NFData env => IO env -> (env -> Benchmark) -> Benchmark
- envWithCleanup :: NFData env => IO env -> (env -> IO a) -> (env -> Benchmark) -> Benchmark
- benchNames :: Benchmark -> [String]
- runBenchmark :: (String -> Bool) -> Benchmark -> BenchmarkAnalysis -> Gauge ()
- data BenchmarkAnalysis
- = BenchmarkNormal (String -> Vector Measured -> Gauge a)
- | BenchmarkIters Int64
Evaluating IO Actions or Pure Functions
To benchmark, an IO action or a pure function must be evaluated to weak head
normal form (WHNF) or normal form NF. This library provides APIs to reduce
IO actions or pure functions to WHNF (e.g. whnf
and whnfIO
) or NF (e.g.
nf
or nfIO
).
Suppose we want to benchmark the following pure function:
firstN :: Int -> [Int] firstN k = take k [(0::Int)..]
We construct a benchmark evaluating it to NF as follows:
nf
firstN 1000
We can also evaluate a pure function to WHNF, however we must remember that it only evaluates the result up to, well, WHNF. To naive eyes it might appear that the following code ought to benchmark the production of the first 1000 list elements:
whnf
firstN 1000
Since this forces the expression to only WHNF, what this would actually benchmark is merely how long it takes to produce the first list element!
Benchmarkable
A Benchmarkable
is the basic type which in turn is used to construct a
Benchmark
. It is a container for code that can be benchmarked. The value
contained inside a Benchmarkable
could be an IO action or a pure function.
data Benchmarkable Source #
A pure function or impure action that can be benchmarked. The function to
be benchmarked is wrapped into a function (runRepeatedly
) that takes an
Int64
parameter which indicates the number of times to run the given
function or action. The wrapper is constructed automatically by the APIs
provided in this library to construct Benchmarkable
.
When perRun
is not set then runRepeatedly
is invoked to perform all
iterations in one measurement interval. When perRun
is set,
runRepeatedly
is always invoked with 1 iteration in one measurement
interval, before a measurement allocEnv
is invoked and after the
measurement cleanEnv
is invoked. The performance counters for each
iteration are then added together for all iterations.
Constructing Benchmarkable
toBenchmarkable :: (Int64 -> IO ()) -> Benchmarkable Source #
This is a low level function to construct a Benchmarkable
value from an
impure wrapper action, where the Int64
parameter dictates the number of
times the action wrapped inside would run. You would normally be using the
other higher level APIs rather than this function to construct a
benchmarkable.
Benchmarking IO actions
Benchmarking an IO
action is straightforward compared to benchmarking pure
code. An IO
action resembling type IO a
can be turned into a
Benchmarkable
using nfIO
to reduce it to normal form or using whnfIO
to reduce it to WHNF.
nfIO :: NFData a => IO a -> Benchmarkable Source #
Perform an action, then evaluate its result to normal form.
This is particularly useful for forcing a lazy IO
action to be
completely performed.
whnfIO :: IO a -> Benchmarkable Source #
Perform an action, then evaluate its result to weak head normal
form (WHNF). This is useful for forcing an IO
action whose result
is an expression to be evaluated down to a more useful value.
Benchmarking pure code
Benchmarking pure functions is a bit tricky. Because GHC optimises
aggressively when compiling with -O
, it is potentially easy to write
innocent-looking benchmark code that will only be evaluated once, for which
all but the first iteration of the timing loop will be timing the cost of
doing nothing.
To work around this, the benchmark applies the function to its argument and evaluates the application. Unlike an IO action we need both the function and its argument. Therefore, the types of APIs to benchmark a pure function look like this:
nf
::NFData
b => (a -> b) -> a ->Benchmarkable
whnf
:: (a -> b) -> a ->Benchmarkable
As both of these types suggest, when you want to benchmark a function, you must supply two values:
- The first element is the function, saturated with all but its last argument.
- The second element is the last argument to the function.
nf :: NFData b => (a -> b) -> a -> Benchmarkable Source #
Apply an argument to a function, and evaluate the result to normal form (NF).
whnf :: (a -> b) -> a -> Benchmarkable Source #
Apply an argument to a function, and evaluate the result to weak head normal form (WHNF).
Benchmarking with Environment
:: (NFData env, NFData b) | |
=> (Int64 -> IO env) | Create an environment for a batch of N runs. The environment will be evaluated to normal form before running. |
-> (env -> IO b) | Function returning the IO action that should be benchmarked with the newly generated environment. |
-> Benchmarkable |
Create a Benchmarkable where a fresh environment is allocated for every batch of runs of the benchmarkable.
The environment is evaluated to normal form before the benchmark is run.
When using whnf
, whnfIO
, etc. Gauge creates a Benchmarkable
whichs runs a batch of N
repeat runs of that expressions. Gauge may
run any number of these batches to get accurate measurements. Environments
created by env
and envWithCleanup
, are shared across all these batches
of runs.
This is fine for simple benchmarks on static input, but when benchmarking IO operations where these operations can modify (and especially grow) the environment this means that later batches might have their accuracy effected due to longer, for example, longer garbage collection pauses.
An example: Suppose we want to benchmark writing to a Chan, if we allocate
the Chan using environment and our benchmark consists of writeChan env ()
,
the contents and thus size of the Chan will grow with every repeat. If
Gauge runs a 1,000 batches of 1,000 repeats, the result is that the
channel will have 999,000 items in it by the time the last batch is run.
Since GHC GC has to copy the live set for every major GC this means our last
set of writes will suffer a lot of noise of the previous repeats.
By allocating a fresh environment for every batch of runs this function should eliminate this effect.
perBatchEnvWithCleanup Source #
:: (NFData env, NFData b) | |
=> (Int64 -> IO env) | Create an environment for a batch of N runs. The environment will be evaluated to normal form before running. |
-> (Int64 -> env -> IO ()) | Clean up the created environment. |
-> (env -> IO b) | Function returning the IO action that should be benchmarked with the newly generated environment. |
-> Benchmarkable |
Same as perBatchEnv
, but but allows for an additional callback
to clean up the environment. Resource clean up is exception safe, that is,
it runs even if the Benchmark
throws an exception.
:: (NFData env, NFData b) | |
=> IO env | Action that creates the environment for a single run. |
-> (env -> IO b) | Function returning the IO action that should be benchmarked with the newly genereted environment. |
-> Benchmarkable |
Create a Benchmarkable where a fresh environment is allocated for every run of the operation to benchmark. This is useful for benchmarking mutable operations that need a fresh environment, such as sorting a mutable Vector.
As with env
and perBatchEnv
the environment is evaluated to normal form
before the benchmark is run.
This introduces extra noise and result in reduce accuracy compared to other Gauge benchmarks. But allows easier benchmarking for mutable operations than was previously possible.
Benchmarks
Specification of a collection of benchmarks and environments. A benchmark may consist of:
- An environment that creates input data for benchmarks, created
with
env
. - A single
Benchmarkable
item with a name, created withbench
. - A (possibly nested) group of
Benchmark
s, created withbgroup
.
Environment :: NFData env => IO env -> (env -> IO a) -> (env -> Benchmark) -> Benchmark | |
Benchmark :: String -> Benchmarkable -> Benchmark | |
BenchGroup :: String -> [Benchmark] -> Benchmark |
Constructing Benchmarks
:: String | A name to identify the benchmark. |
-> Benchmarkable | An activity to be benchmarked. |
-> Benchmark |
Create a single benchmark.
:: String | A name to identify the group of benchmarks. |
-> [Benchmark] | Benchmarks to group under this name. |
-> Benchmark |
Group several benchmarks together under a common name.
Benchmarks with Environment
:: NFData env | |
=> IO env | Create the environment. The environment will be evaluated to normal form before being passed to the benchmark. |
-> (env -> Benchmark) | Take the newly created environment and make it available to the given benchmarks. |
-> Benchmark |
Run a benchmark (or collection of benchmarks) in the given environment. The purpose of an environment is to lazily create input data to pass to the functions that will be benchmarked.
A common example of environment data is input that is read from a file. Another is a large data structure constructed in-place.
By deferring the creation of an environment when its associated benchmarks need the its, we avoid two problems that this strategy caused:
- Memory pressure distorted the results of unrelated benchmarks. If one benchmark needed e.g. a gigabyte-sized input, it would force the garbage collector to do extra work when running some other benchmark that had no use for that input. Since the data created by an environment is only available when it is in scope, it should be garbage collected before other benchmarks are run.
- The time cost of generating all needed inputs could be significant in cases where no inputs (or just a few) were really needed. This occurred often, for instance when just one out of a large suite of benchmarks was run, or when a user would list the collection of benchmarks without running any.
Creation. An environment is created right before its related
benchmarks are run. The IO
action that creates the environment
is run, then the newly created environment is evaluated to normal
form (hence the NFData
constraint) before being passed to the
function that receives the environment.
Complex environments. If you need to create an environment that contains multiple values, simply pack the values into a tuple.
Lazy pattern matching. In situations where a "real"
environment is not needed, e.g. if a list of benchmark names is
being generated, undefined
will be passed to the function that
receives the environment. This avoids the overhead of generating
an environment that will not actually be used.
The function that receives the environment must use lazy pattern
matching to deconstruct the tuple, as use of strict pattern
matching will cause a crash if undefined
is passed in.
Example. This program runs benchmarks in an environment that contains two values. The first value is the contents of a text file; the second is a string. Pay attention to the use of a lazy pattern to deconstruct the tuple in the function that returns the benchmarks to be run.
setupEnv = do let small = replicate 1000 (1 :: Int) big <- map length . words <$> readFile "/usr/dict/words" return (small, big) main = defaultMain [ -- notice the lazy pattern match here! env setupEnv $ \ ~(small,big) -> bgroup "main" [ bgroup "small" [ bench "length" $ whnf length small , bench "length . filter" $ whnf (length . filter (==1)) small ] , bgroup "big" [ bench "length" $ whnf length big , bench "length . filter" $ whnf (length . filter (==1)) big ] ] ]
Discussion. The environment created in the example above is
intentionally not ideal. As Haskell's scoping rules suggest, the
variable big
is in scope for the benchmarks that use only
small
. It would be better to create a separate environment for
big
, so that it will not be kept alive while the unrelated
benchmarks are being run.
Listing benchmarks
benchNames :: Benchmark -> [String] Source #
Retrieve the names of all benchmarks. Grouped benchmarks are prefixed with the name of the group they're in.
Running Benchmarks
:: (String -> Bool) | Select benchmarks by name. |
-> Benchmark | |
-> BenchmarkAnalysis | Analysis function |
-> Gauge () |
Run benchmarkables, selected by a given selector function, under a given benchmark and analyse the output using the given analysis function.
data BenchmarkAnalysis Source #
The function to run after measurement
BenchmarkNormal (String -> Vector Measured -> Gauge a) | |
BenchmarkIters Int64 |