Stream: git-wasmtime

Topic: wasmtime / PR #3350 Add `*_unchecked` variants of `Func` ...

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 14 2021 at 20:17):

alexcrichton opened PR #3350 from expose-raw to main:

This commit is what is hopefully going to be my last installment within
the saga of optimizing function calls in/out of WebAssembly modules in
the C API. This is yet another alternative approach to #3345 (sorry) but
also contains everything necessary to make the C API fast. As in #3345
the general idea is just moving checks out of the call path in the same
style of TypedFunc.

This new strategy takes inspiration from previously learned attempts
effectively "just" exposes how we previously passed *mut u128 through
trampolines for arguments/results. This storage format is formalized
through a new ValRaw union that is exposed from the wasmtime crate.
By doing this it made it relatively easy to expose two new APIs:

• Func::new_unchecked
• Func::call_unchecked

These are the same as their checked equivalents except that they're
unsafe and they work with *mut ValRaw rather than safe slices of
Val. Working with these eschews type checks and such and requires
callers/embedders to do the right thing.

These two new functions are then exposed via the C API with new
functions, enabling C to have a fast-path of calling/defining functions.
This fast path is akin to Func::wrap in Rust, although that API can't
be built in C due to C not having generics in the same way that Rust
has.

For some benchmarks, the benchmarks here are:

• nop - Call a wasm function from the host that does nothing and
  returns nothing.

• i64 - Call a wasm function from the host, the wasm function calls a
  host function, and the host function returns an i64 all the way out to
  the original caller.

• many - Call a wasm function from the host, the wasm calls
  host function with 5 i32 parameters, and then an i64 result is
  returned back to the original host

• i64 host - just the overhead of the wasm calling the host, so the
  wasm calls the host function in a loop.

• many host - same as i64 host, but calling the many host function.

All numbers in this table are in nanoseconds, and this is just one
measurement as well so there's bound to be some variation in the precise
numbers here.

Name	Rust	C (before)	C (after)
nop	19	112	25
i64	22	207	32
many	27	189	34
i64 host	2	38	5
many host	7	75	8

The main conclusion here is that the C API is significantly faster than
before when using the *_unchecked variants of APIs. The Rust
implementation is still the ceiling (or floor I guess?) for performance
The main reason that C is slower than Rust is that a little bit more has
to travel through memory where on the Rust side of things we can
monomorphize and inline a bit more to get rid of that. Overall though
the costs are way way down from where they were originally and I don't
plan on doing a whole lot more myself at this time. There's various
things we theoretically could do I've considered but implementation-wise
I think they'll be much more weighty.

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Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 16 2021 at 18:57):

alexcrichton updated PR #3350 from expose-raw to main.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 16 2021 at 20:17):

alexcrichton updated PR #3350 from expose-raw to main.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 21 2021 at 14:53):

alexcrichton requested peterhuene for a review on PR #3350.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 21 2021 at 20:31):

alexcrichton updated PR #3350 from expose-raw to main.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:13):

peterhuene submitted PR review.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:13):

peterhuene submitted PR review.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:13):

peterhuene created PR review comment:

Do we need a comment regarding the ownership of the returned value? Caller is responsible for calling wasmtime_externref_delete, right?

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:13):

peterhuene created PR review comment:

Should ref be const (seems like other functions in this file could use const for their parameters as well, e.g. wasmtime_externref_clone, wasmtime_externref_data, etc) so that there's no confusion regarding owernship?

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:13):

peterhuene created PR review comment:

Is it more accurate to say that the returned raw value is not tracked by the garbage collector and the underlying externref _may_ be collected if a GC occurs, thereby leaving the raw value dangling?

From this wording it sounds like the dangling is guaranteed, but if, for example, the wasmtime_externref_t given to this function hasn't been deleted yet, it should still have a strong reference even after a GC occurs and the raw value would still be valid, correct?

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:34):

alexcrichton submitted PR review.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:34):

alexcrichton created PR review comment:

Indeed!

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:37):

alexcrichton updated PR #3350 from expose-raw to main.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:37):

alexcrichton submitted PR review.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:37):

alexcrichton created PR review comment:

Nah yeah that makes sense, I've pushed some tweaks to the wording.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 18:58):

peterhuene submitted PR review.

Wasmtime GitHub notifications bot (Sep 24 2021 at 19:05):

alexcrichton merged PR #3350.

Last updated: Dec 23 2024 at 12:05 UTC