in reply to Re^5: XS: EXTEND/mPUSHi
in thread XS: EXTEND/mPUSHi
I've benchmarked that for some huge arrays in the past ... and not detected any advantage in passing by reference (with Inline::C).
I'm guessing that you were populating the passed-by-reference Av with new SVs?
This (rnd64i( int n, SV *avref ) (i for inplace--terrible name)), assumes a pre-populated (not just pre-sized) array of n scalars into which it then sets the values to be returned. The Perl code contrasts ARGV[0] calls for 1 million values each time, with the same for rand64() which returns them on the stack and assigns them to an array.
#! perl -slw use strict; use Inline C => Config => BUILD_NOISY => 1; use Inline C => <<'END_C', NAME => 'monkeys', CLEAN_AFTER_BUILD => 0; void rnd64( int n ) { dXSARGS; static unsigned __int64 y = 88172645463325252i64; SP = MARK; EXTEND( SP, n ); while( n-- ) { y ^= y << 13; y ^= y >> 7; y ^= y << 17; mPUSHu( y ); } PUTBACK; return; } void rnd64i( int n, AV* av ) { dXSARGS; SV **ary = AvARRAY( av ); static unsigned __int64 y = 88172645463325252i64; SP = MARK; while( n-- ) { y ^= y << 13; y ^= y >> 7; y ^= y << 17; sv_setuv( ary[ n ], y ); } PUTBACK; return; } END_C use Data::Dump qw[ pp ]; use Devel::Peek; use Time::HiRes qw[ time ]; my $start = time; my @rands = (1) x 1e6; for( 1 .. $ARGV[0] ) { @rands = rnd64( 1e6 ); } my $stop = time; printf "stack->array assign: Rate: %.9f\n", ( $stop - $start ) / ( 1 +e6 * $ARGV[ 0 ] ); $start = time; my @rands2 = (1) x 1e6; for( 1 .. $ARGV[0] ) { @rands = rnd64i( 1e6, \@rands2 ); } $stop = time; printf "Modify array in-place: Rate: %.9f\n", ( $stop - $start ) / ( 1 +e6 * $ARGV[ 0 ] ); exit;
The result is rnd64i() is up to 100 times faster:
C:\test>Monkeys 1 stack->array assign: Rate: 0.000011359 Modify array in-place: Rate: 0.000000121 C:\test>Monkeys 10 stack->array assign: Rate: 0.000001353 Modify array in-place: Rate: 0.000000037 C:\test>Monkeys 100 stack->array assign: Rate: 0.000000365 Modify array in-place: Rate: 0.000000030
That's a saving worth having.
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