Is there any language that native-compiles faster than D?

[James Lu]

On Thursday, 20 August 2020 at 20:50:25 UTC, Per Nordlöw wrote:
> After having evaluated the compilation speed of D compared to 
> other languages at
>
>     https://github.com/nordlow/compiler-benchmark
>
> I wonder; is there any language that compiles to native code 
> anywhere nearly as fast or faster than D, except C?
>
> If so it most likely needs to use a backend other than LLVM.
>
> I believe Jai is supposed to do that but it hasn't been 
> released yet.

V8 JavaScript compiles faster:

$ d8 --always-opt --trace-opt --single-threaded 
--no-compilation-cache mandelbrot.js | ts -s "%.s"
0.000025 [compiling method 0x3fc50821068d <JSFunction (sfi = 
0x3fc508210165)> using TurboFan]
0.001651 [optimizing 0x3fc50821068d <JSFunction (sfi = 
0x3fc508210165)> - took 4.455, 41.945, 0.052 ms]
0.001707 [optimizing 0x3fc508085b65 <JSFunction Complex (sfi = 
0x3fc508210261)> because --always-opt]
0.001736 [compiling method 0x3fc508085b65 <JSFunction Complex 
(sfi = 0x3fc508210261)> using TurboFan]
0.001763 [optimizing 0x3fc508085b65 <JSFunction Complex (sfi = 
0x3fc508210261)> - took 0.125, 0.284, 0.019 ms]
0.001789 [optimizing 0x3fc508211665 <JSFunction 
iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 0x3fc508210229)> because --always-opt]
0.001817 [compiling method 0x3fc508211665 <JSFunction 
iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 0x3fc508210229)> using TurboFan]
0.001842 [optimizing 0x3fc508211665 <JSFunction 
iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 0x3fc508210229)> - took 0.167, 1.197, 
0.022 ms]
0.001868 [optimizing 0x3fc508085b85 <JSFunction abs (sfi = 
0x3fc508210299)> because --always-opt]
0.001892 [compiling method 0x3fc508085b85 <JSFunction abs (sfi = 
0x3fc508210299)> using TurboFan]
0.001916 [optimizing 0x3fc508085b85 <JSFunction abs (sfi = 
0x3fc508210299)> - took 0.125, 0.421, 0.025 ms]
0.002093 [optimizing 0x3fc508085bbd <JSFunction mul (sfi = 
0x3fc508210309)> because --always-opt]
0.002337 [compiling method 0x3fc508085bbd <JSFunction mul (sfi = 
0x3fc508210309)> using TurboFan]
0.002365 [optimizing 0x3fc508085bbd <JSFunction mul (sfi = 
0x3fc508210309)> - took 0.134, 0.550, 0.023 ms]
0.002389 [optimizing 0x3fc508085ba1 <JSFunction add (sfi = 
0x3fc5082102d1)> because --always-opt]
0.002498 [compiling method 0x3fc508085ba1 <JSFunction add (sfi = 
0x3fc5082102d1)> using TurboFan]


--single-threaded disables compilation background tasks
--always-opt makes V8 immediately compile the function without 
profiling

Timestamps thanks to "ts" from moreutils.

$ time dmd -c mandelbrot.d

real	0m0.507s
user	0m0.416s
sys	0m0.094s

V8 compiles 202x faster.

-c to omit linking, which can be slow.

That's using the struct/double version. (I also ran it with 
timestamps on the verbose version, writing to disk accounted for 
a negligible amount of time.)

Obviously, take these results with a grain of salt, since 
--always-opt makes the compiled program very slow. But still, 
even with it off, V8 can compile very fast.

---

LDC2 takes 1.695 seconds to compile with no flags, and 2.126 
seconds with O2.
QuickJS takes around 0.36 seconds to compile, but the program 
output is unbearably slow.

However, I suspect by the time the fastest and most balanced D 
compiler finishes compiling the program and executing it, V8 will 
already have finished executing it.