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diff --git a/system/doc/efficiency_guide/myths.xml b/system/doc/efficiency_guide/myths.xml index 5d3ad78b23..778cd06c09 100644 --- a/system/doc/efficiency_guide/myths.xml +++ b/system/doc/efficiency_guide/myths.xml @@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ The Initial Developer of the Original Code is Ericsson AB. </legalnotice> - <title>The Eight Myths of Erlang Performance</title> + <title>The Seven Myths of Erlang Performance</title> <prepared>Bjorn Gustavsson</prepared> <docno></docno> <date>2007-11-10</date> @@ -35,80 +35,33 @@ <marker id="myths"></marker> <p>Some truths seem to live on well beyond their best-before date, perhaps because "information" spreads faster from person-to-person - than a single release note that says, for example, that funs - have become faster.</p> + than a single release note that says, for example, that body-recursive + calls have become faster.</p> <p>This section tries to kill the old truths (or semi-truths) that have become myths.</p> <section> - <title>Myth: Funs are Slow</title> - <p>Funs used to be very slow, slower than <c>apply/3</c>. - Originally, funs were implemented using nothing more than - compiler trickery, ordinary tuples, <c>apply/3</c>, and a great - deal of ingenuity.</p> - - <p>But that is history. Funs was given its own data type - in R6B and was further optimized in R7B. - Now the cost for a fun call falls roughly between the cost for a call - to a local function and <c>apply/3</c>.</p> - </section> - - <section> - <title>Myth: List Comprehensions are Slow</title> - - <p>List comprehensions used to be implemented using funs, and in the - old days funs were indeed slow.</p> - - <p>Nowadays, the compiler rewrites list comprehensions into an ordinary - recursive function. Using a tail-recursive function with - a reverse at the end would be still faster. Or would it? - That leads us to the next myth.</p> - </section> - - <section> <title>Myth: Tail-Recursive Functions are Much Faster Than Recursive Functions</title> <p><marker id="tail_recursive"></marker>According to the myth, - recursive functions leave references - to dead terms on the stack and the garbage collector has to copy - all those dead terms, while tail-recursive functions immediately - discard those terms.</p> - - <p>That used to be true before R7B. In R7B, the compiler started - to generate code that overwrites references to terms that will never - be used with an empty list, so that the garbage collector would not - keep dead values any longer than necessary.</p> - - <p>Even after that optimization, a tail-recursive function is - still most of the times faster than a body-recursive function. Why?</p> - - <p>It has to do with how many words of stack that are used in each - recursive call. In most cases, a recursive function uses more words - on the stack for each recursion than the number of words a tail-recursive - would allocate on the heap. As more memory is used, the garbage - collector is invoked more frequently, and it has more work traversing - the stack.</p> - - <p>In R12B and later releases, there is an optimization that - in many cases reduces the number of words used on the stack in - body-recursive calls. A body-recursive list function and a - tail-recursive function that calls <seealso - marker="stdlib:lists#reverse/1">lists:reverse/1</seealso> at - the end will use the same amount of memory. - <c>lists:map/2</c>, <c>lists:filter/2</c>, list comprehensions, - and many other recursive functions now use the same amount of space - as their tail-recursive equivalents.</p> - - <p>So, which is faster? - It depends. On Solaris/Sparc, the body-recursive function seems to - be slightly faster, even for lists with a lot of elements. On the x86 - architecture, tail-recursion was up to about 30% faster.</p> - - <p>So, the choice is now mostly a matter of taste. If you really do need - the utmost speed, you must <em>measure</em>. You can no longer be - sure that the tail-recursive list function always is the fastest.</p> + using a tail-recursive function that builds a list in reverse + followed by a call to <c>lists:reverse/1</c> is faster than + a body-recursive function that builds the list in correct order; + the reason being that body-recursive functions use more memory than + tail-recursive functions.</p> + + <p>That was true to some extent before R12B. It was even more true + before R7B. Today, not so much. A body-recursive function + generally uses the same amount of memory as a tail-recursive + function. It is generally not possible to predict whether the + tail-recursive or the body-recursive version will be + faster. Therefore, use the version that makes your code cleaner + (hint: it is usually the body-recursive version).</p> + + <p>For a more thorough discussion about tail and body recursion, + see <url href="http://ferd.ca/erlang-s-tail-recursion-is-not-a-silver-bullet.html">Erlang's Tail Recursion is Not a Silver Bullet</url>.</p> <note><p>A tail-recursive function that does not need to reverse the list at the end is faster than a body-recursive function, @@ -199,6 +152,29 @@ vanilla_reverse([], Acc) -> <p>That was once true, but from R6B the BEAM compiler can see that a variable is not used.</p> + + <p>Similarly, trivial transformations on the source-code level + such as converting a <c>case</c> statement to clauses at the + top-level of the function seldom makes any difference to the + generated code.</p> + </section> + + <section> + <title>Myth: A NIF Always Speeds Up Your Program</title> + + <p>Rewriting Erlang code to a NIF to make it faster should be + seen as a last resort. It is only guaranteed to be dangerous, + but not guaranteed to speed up the program.</p> + + <p>Doing too much work in each NIF call will + <seealso marker="erts:erl_nif#WARNING">degrade responsiveness + of the VM</seealso>. Doing too little work may mean that + the gain of the faster processing in the NIF is eaten up by + the overhead of calling the NIF and checking the arguments.</p> + + <p>Be sure to read about + <seealso marker="erts:erl_nif#lengthy_work">Long-running NIFs</seealso> + before writing a NIF.</p> </section> </chapter> |