bug#21514: Guile 2.2: Sluggish elf calls, esp around arity / promises / statprof

[Christopher Allan Webber]

I was testing a program of mine under Guile 2.2, and was surprised to
find things slower than in Guile 2.0, surprising given all the various
optimizations I've heard about!  However, I think I've found good clues
as to what's going on.

The tl;dr: there are a lot of calls to bytevector-u64-ref being called
by the various elf utilities, and anything that checks debugging
information, including anything checking arity (like promises!) gets
slowed dramatically.

First I ran statprof, and a number of procedure calls jumped to the top
as most expensive, even though they hadn't in Guile 2.0.

  scheme@(activitystuff json-ld)> (statprof (lambda () (expand fjson-test-2)) 
#:loop 2000)
  %     cumulative   self             
  time   seconds     seconds  procedure
   20.88      1.96      1.94  bytevector-u64-ref
   15.79      3.72      1.47  system/vm/elf.scm:675:0:parse-elf64-section-header
    8.25      1.19      0.77  system/vm/elf.scm:820:0:string-table-ref
    5.44      6.25      0.51  system/vm/elf.scm:828:0:elf-section-by-name
    5.09      0.47      0.47  system/vm/elf.scm:702:0:elf-section
    3.86      0.36      0.36  utf8->string
    3.33      0.38      0.31  
/home/cwebber/devel/activitystuff/activitystuff/contrib/fash.scm:196:0:fash-ref
    2.98      0.29      0.28  make-bytevector
    2.63      0.24      0.24  bytevector-u32-ref
    2.63      0.24      0.24  equal?
    1.93      0.18      0.18  hash
    1.40      0.13      0.13  bytevector-copy!

Hm, that's a lot of calls to bytevector and elf things!  Those weren't
there before... where did they come from?

I won't reproduce it here, but

  scheme@(activitystuff json-ld)> (statprof (lambda () (expand fjson-test-2)) 
#:loop 2000)

led to an explosion of thousands of elf/bytevector references, not only
at the top where some debugging checks might be expected, but much
further on too.  I noticed however that (make-promise) and checks to
arity seem to be coming up a lot, so I decided to check that.  In guile
2.0, here is what a simple (delay foo) looks like:

  scheme@(guile-user)> ,trace (delay (+ 1 2 3))
  trace: |  (#<procedure 2bbf820> #(#<directory (guile-user) 25b7c60> #f #f # 
…))
  trace: |  #(#<directory (guile-user) 25b7c60> guile (guile) make-promise (…) 
#)
  trace: (#<procedure 2bd53c0 at <current input>:1:0 ()>)
  trace: |  (#<procedure 25567e0 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2777:4 (name #:optional …> 
…)
  trace: |  |  (nested-ref-module #<module () 2532990> (guile))
  trace: |  |  |  (module-ref-submodule #<module () 2532990> guile)
  trace: |  |  |  |  (#<procedure 25523a0 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2004:2 (module)> 
#)
  trace: |  |  |  |  #<hash-table 2556880 90/113>
  trace: |  |  |  |  (hashq-ref #<hash-table 2556880 90/113> guile)
  trace: |  |  |  |  #<module (guile) 2532b40>
  trace: |  |  |  #<module (guile) 2532b40>
  trace: |  |  #<module (guile) 2532b40>
  trace: |  |  (#<procedure 258f460 at ice-9/deprecated.scm:415:8 (mod)> 
#<mod…>)
  trace: |  |  |  (#<procedure 25521a0 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2004:2 (module)> 
#<…>)
  trace: |  |  |  #<interface (guile) 2532ab0>
  trace: |  |  #<interface (guile) 2532ab0>
  trace: |  #<module (guile) 2532b40>
  trace: (make-promise #<procedure 2c41d60 at <current input>:1:0 ()>)
  trace: |  (#<procedure 2c48b80>)
  trace: |  (() ((0 0 . 0)) ((2 5 0)))
  trace: #<promise #<procedure 2c41d60 at <current input>:1:0 ()>>

In guile 2.2, it begins like this:

  scheme@(activitystuff json-ld)> ,trace (delay (+ 1 2 3))
  trace: (#<procedure dfc620 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2987:4 (name #:optional 
autoload version #:key ensure)> (guile) #:ensure #f)
  trace: |  (nested-ref-module #<module () e06e10> (guile))
  trace: |  |  (module-ref-submodule #<module () e06e10> guile)
  trace: |  |  |  (#<procedure dfc8a0 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2245:2 (module)> 
#<module () e06e10>)
  trace: |  |  |  #<hash-table dfe2c0 139/223>
  trace: |  |  |  (hashq-ref #<hash-table dfe2c0 139/223> guile)
  trace: |  |  |  #<module (guile) e06f30>
  trace: |  |  #<module (guile) e06f30>
  trace: |  #<module (guile) e06f30>
  trace: |  (#<procedure dfc820 at ice-9/boot-9.scm:2245:2 (module)> #<module 
(guile) e06f30>)
  trace: |  #<interface (guile) e06ea0>
  trace: #<module (guile) e06f30>
  trace: |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 
 |  |  |  |  |  |  -1> (make-promise #<procedure ?>)
  trace: |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 
 |  |  |  |  |  |  -1> (program-minimum-arity #<p?>)
  trace: (program-code #<procedure 7f7c94290a50 at <unknown port>:38:7 ()>)
  trace: 140173038389440
  trace: |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 
 |  |  |  |  |  |  -1> (find-program-minimum-arity ?)
  trace: (find-debug-context 140173038389440)
  trace: |  (find-mapped-elf-image 140173038389440)
  trace: |  #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 176 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?)
  trace: (and=> #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 176 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?) #)
  trace: (debug-context-from-image #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?))
  trace: |  (parse-elf #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 176 2 0 0 0 ?))
  trace: |  |  (has-elf-header? #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 176 ?))
  trace: |  |  |  (bytevector-length #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?))
  trace: |  |  |  2523
  trace: |  |  |  (bytevector-length #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?))
  trace: |  |  |  2523
  trace: |  |  |  (bytevector-u32-ref #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 ?) ?)
  trace: |  |  |  1
  trace: |  |  #t
  trace: |  (parse-elf64 #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 176 2 0 0 ?) ?)
  trace: |  |  (bytevector-u16-ref #vu8(127 69 76 70 2 1 1 255 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 64 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ?) ?)
  trace: |  |  3
  
... and continues for nearly a thousand lines!

I suspect this is slowing Guile down a lot!  Maybe this will be helpful
in making Guile 2.2 fast for code like this?

Thanks!
 - Chris