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

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 8/26/20 12:00 PM, James Lu wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 August 2020 at 14:45:48 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On 8/25/20 9:13 PM, James Lu wrote:
>>> V8 JavaScript compiles faster:
>>>
>>> $ d8 --always-opt --trace-opt --single-threaded
>>
>> I just want to point out that ts is not an accurate timestamping 
>> system. The shell is starting ts and d8 simultaneously, and it's very 
>> possible that d8 has done a lot of stuff by the time ts gets around to 
>> deciding what timestamp 0 is. In fact, d8 could be completely 
>> finished, and all its output buffered in the pipe, before ts does 
>> anything. Especially when these times are so short.
>>
>> Not saying the data is wrong, but I am not certain this is proof.
>>
>> Use shell time builtin.
> 
> $ time d8 --always-opt --trace-opt --single-threaded 
> --no-compilation-cache mandelbrot.js
> [compiling method 0x182b08210471 <JSFunction (sfi = 0x182b08210129)> 
> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08210471 <JSFunction (sfi = 0x182b08210129)> - took 
> 0.888, 1.326, 0.026 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b0821073d <JSFunction main (sfi = 0x182b082101e5)> 
> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b0821073d <JSFunction main (sfi = 
> 0x182b082101e5)> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b0821073d <JSFunction main (sfi = 0x182b082101e5)> - 
> took 0.401, 3.229, 0.044 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085bdd <JSFunction Complex (sfi = 0x182b0821021d)> 
> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b08085bdd <JSFunction Complex (sfi = 
> 0x182b0821021d)> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085bdd <JSFunction Complex (sfi = 0x182b0821021d)> - 
> took 0.138, 0.296, 0.028 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b08210709 <JSFunction iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 
> 0x182b082101ad)> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b08210709 <JSFunction iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 
> 0x182b082101ad)> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08210709 <JSFunction iterate_mandelbrot (sfi = 
> 0x182b082101ad)> - took 0.228, 1.619, 0.035 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085bfd <JSFunction abs (sfi = 0x182b08210255)> 
> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b08085bfd <JSFunction abs (sfi = 0x182b08210255)> 
> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085bfd <JSFunction abs (sfi = 0x182b08210255)> - 
> took 0.213, 0.502, 0.033 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085c35 <JSFunction mul (sfi = 0x182b082102c5)> 
> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b08085c35 <JSFunction mul (sfi = 0x182b082102c5)> 
> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085c35 <JSFunction mul (sfi = 0x182b082102c5)> - 
> took 0.183, 0.643, 0.030 ms]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085c19 <JSFunction add (sfi = 0x182b0821028d)> 
> because --always-opt]
> [compiling method 0x182b08085c19 <JSFunction add (sfi = 0x182b0821028d)> 
> using TurboFan]
> [optimizing 0x182b08085c19 <JSFunction add (sfi = 0x182b0821028d)> - 
> took 0.150, 0.449, 0.041 ms]
> 
> real    0m0.052s
> user    0m0.022s
> sys    0m0.021s
> 
> --always-opt makes V8 compile the function the first time it is called, 
> so we can ignore interpreter overhead. I changed the code to quit after 
> one function call, so we would measure how long it takes to compile and 
> run the compilation.
> 
> For the sake of transparency, I modified some of the code to move it 
> into a main function to ensure it would compile the code. Surprisingly, 
> doing this reduced compilation time.
> 
> Here is the exact code I used: 
> https://gist.github.com/CrazyPython/3552e1405dbb4b640810f6443cd0a015

Thanks, that's really impressive. D has some significant overhead which 
might explain some of the discrepancy.

Compiling an empty main function with dmd takes 0.128 seconds on my 
system, but of course comparing my system to yours isn't going to be 
useful.

Compiling with -betterC an empty main takes 0.065 seconds, which means 
about half the overhead is spent compiling D runtime setup things?

It is difficult to assign what is overhead and what is compilation, 
especially for a JIT compiler, so the claim of "100x", may not be 
accurate, especially with these low timings. Still, it definitely seems 
faster than D.

-Steve