rust: amortize allocations

[BurntSushi]

This is a PoC for only the Rust code that shows how to optimize it a bit more by both amortizing allocation and reusing the result of UTF-8 decoding instead of repeating it for each iteration of the inner loop.

The results on my machine:

$ yarn bench
yarn run v1.22.4
$ node run.js bench
go: 1.573124
javascript: 2.94
rust: 1.295147587
Done in 6.17s.

Of course, this isn't a fair comparison, since this doesn't update the Go code to reuse allocation either. Although it wouldn't be surprising if its GC was doing this automatically anyway.

I'm not necessarily submitting this with a request to merge it, but rather, just providing more data.

[mlbright]

I'm on a MacBook Pro 2017, and I applied #3 because it fixes and improves the Golang version. Then I added @BurntSushi's code, then switched to jemallocator.

• master

go: 2.082300
javascript: 3.823
rust: 3.291851612

• master + #3 (fixes and improves the Go version)

go: 1.684807
javascript: 3.861
rust: 3.337344558

• master + #3 + @BurntSushi's implementation

go: 1.688000
javascript: 3.84
rust: 1.876212421

• master + #3 + @BurntSushi + jemallocator

go: 1.685848
javascript: 3.845
rust: 1.655761329

MacOS's allocator could still be partly to blame.

[christianscott]

Thanks for making the comparisons @mlbright. Even with #3 it's still not fair to compare this version to the go implementation unfortunately. You would need to amortize the slice allocations like @BurntSushi has done here – I imagine placing them on a struct like he has done would work.

[mlbright]

That's true, but if we just focus on Rust for a moment, I think the memory allocator on the Mac makes a big difference. I have a similar language comparison for a less useful algorithm. Ignore that my data structures are not ideal and that the comparison is again not fair. The performance difference as a result of changing allocators is dramatic.

➜  sudoku-norvig-rs git:(slow) cargo run --release
   Compiling sudoku-norvig-rs v0.1.0 (/Users/brightm/Documents/sudoku-norvig-rs)
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 1.79s
     Running `target/release/sudoku-norvig-rs`
Solved 50 of 50 easy puzzles (avg. 0.0008 secs (1251.64 Hz), max 0.0019 secs).
Solved 95 of 95 hard puzzles (avg. 0.0020 secs (505.09 Hz), max 0.0085 secs).
Solved 11 of 11 hardest puzzles (avg. 0.0013 secs (788.14 Hz), max 0.0020 secs).
Solved 99 of 99 random puzzles (avg. 0.0007 secs (1378.78 Hz), max 0.0011 secs).
➜  sudoku-norvig-rs git:(slow) git checkout -
Switched to branch 'slow-add-jem'
➜  sudoku-norvig-rs git:(slow-add-jem) cargo run --release
    Updating crates.io index
   Compiling sudoku-norvig-rs v0.1.0 (/Users/brightm/Documents/sudoku-norvig-rs)
    Finished release [optimized] target(s) in 3.45s
     Running `target/release/sudoku-norvig-rs`
Solved 50 of 50 easy puzzles (avg. 0.0004 secs (2837.08 Hz), max 0.0004 secs).
Solved 95 of 95 hard puzzles (avg. 0.0010 secs (1011.52 Hz), max 0.0045 secs).
Solved 11 of 11 hardest puzzles (avg. 0.0004 secs (2382.72 Hz), max 0.0005 secs).
Solved 99 of 99 random puzzles (avg. 0.0004 secs (2790.27 Hz), max 0.0005 secs).