Haiku thread switching speed is about 4 times slower than Windows 7

[X512]

This is Haiku hrev53608 32 bit gcc2hybrid, real hardware.

I made some benchmarks for Haiku and Windows. Benchmark using 2 threads: main thread and working thread. In each step main thread send request to worker thread and wait for reply of working thread. Working thread does simple processing and send reply. Benchmark result is number of steps per second. According profiler command, about 90% of execution is inside switch_sem_etc and release_sem_etc of kernel_x86. This functions probably should be optimized.

Also single core mode is about 3 times more efficient than multi core, but this behavior is similar to Windows.

I think that fast thread switching speed is required for Haiku because Haiku is actively using threads, for example thread pair in application and app_server for each window.

[X512]

Benchmark code for Haiku.

[X512]

Benchmark code for Windows.

[X512]

Running "profiler -a ThreadTests" with only one core enabled.

[X512]

Running "profiler -a ThreadTests" with all cores enabled. Unrelated threads removed.

[X512]

Benchmark bar graph.

[waddlesplash]

32 bit gcc2hybrid, real hardware.

GCC 2 is a very old compiler that does not have good optimizations. Windows is of course compiled with a much newer compiler that can optimize significantly more, so even before actual code behavior is taken into account, this is a significant difference. Can you please retest on 64-bit Haiku?

[X512]

Benchmark results.

[X512]

Benchmark bar graph.

[X512]

Running "profiler -a ThreadTests" with only one core enabled. Unrelated threads removed.

[X512]

Running "profiler -a ThreadTests" with all cores enabled. Unrelated threads removed.

[X512]

I tested on another machine with 64 bit CPU and Windows 10 installed. Now difference is significantly smaller. Windows 10 is about 1.1 - 1.25 times faster than Haiku. Multi core is about 2.5 times slower than single core. It will be also good to test 32 bit gcc4+ Haiku.

[X512]

I am also interested why multi core is significantly shower than single core. Is it some kind of hardware overhead of interaction between cores?

[pulkomandy]

Semaphores are not the right tool to use on Haiku for this, because they are system-global (any other process can acquire and release them). Try your benchmark with pthread mutexes or a BLocker and you will get different results.

And yes, there are optimizations made when both threads are run on the same core. No cache invalidation problems, and there are many shortcuts one can take with atomic accesses and the like, both at the hardware and at the software level.

The performance problems of semaphores have been known back in BeOS as well, leading to constructs like the benaphore, which you could probably make use of as well: ​https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/benewsletter/Issue1-26.html#Engineering1-26

[axeld]

Since it hasn't been mentioned here: did you build Haiku without debugging turned on? You would have to turn it off actively, as the default is a kernel debug build.

[X512]

Replying to pulkomandy:

Semaphores are not the right tool to use on Haiku for this, because they are system-global (any other process can acquire and release them). Try your benchmark with pthread mutexes or a BLocker and you will get different results.

pthread_mutex version is not working. pthread_mutex seems not support double lock and release from another thread. <semaphore.h> version is slower than native semaphore.

[X512]

Replying to axeld:

Since it hasn't been mentioned here: did you build Haiku without debugging turned on? You would have to turn it off actively, as the default is a kernel debug build.

This is default nightly-raw build. What options should I use for release build? I can't find debug/release options in ​https://www.haiku-os.org/guides/building/.

[pulkomandy]

Replying to X512:

pthread_mutex version is not working. pthread_mutex seems not support double lock and release from another thread.

BLocker currently allows this, so I would suggest to use that. I think it implements the "benaphore" trick I linked above.

[waddlesplash]

Except, the "Benaphore" trick is only an optimization if the lock/semaphore will be often acquired and released by the same thread. In this case of two (or more) threads, the Benaphore is just a slight extra overhead and will not be an optimization at all...

[waddlesplash]

This is default nightly-raw build. What options should I use for release build?

You need to change the KDEBUG_LEVEL to 0, in ​https://xref.plausible.coop/source/xref/haiku/build/config_headers/kernel_debug_config.h#8

[pulkomandy]

Replying to waddlesplash:

Except, the "Benaphore" trick is only an optimization if the lock/semaphore will be often acquired and released by the same thread. In this case of two (or more) threads, the Benaphore is just a slight extra overhead and will not be an optimization at all...

It is an optimization for low-contention cases, which is any mutex that spends more time being released than locked. This is pretty much the case when you use a mutex for protecting a critical section, and not for waiting on another thread (for which a condition variable would make more sense). It also optimizes the no-lock path by saving a syscall whenever the mutex is "obviously" not locked, and is slower only when there is contention anyway (basically in the case where if you had attempted to lock a few CPU cycles earlier, you would have been waiting anyway).

So yes, maybe it doesn't help much in mutex benchmarks, but in all other cases, it's quite benefical.

[waddlesplash]

Of course, I was just remarking about this one case.

[X512]

Can't build Haiku with gcc4+ compiler for 32 bit x86 architecture.

jam -q @nightly-raw output:

DownloadLocatedFile1 download/gcc_syslibs_devel-5.4.0_2016_06_04-4-x86.hpkg 
--2019-12-05 03:39:08--  https://eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org/haikuports/master/build-packages/6efb4aa89c1ea031aaa55b6d9925f30d61ab1c94c1450660cbd3cb9aa78d57d1/packages/gcc_syslibs_devel-5.4.0_2016_06_04-4-x86.hpkg
eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org をDNSに問いあわせています... 104.248.198.131
eu.hpkg.haiku-os.org|104.248.198.131|:443 に接続しています... 接続しました。
HTTP による接続要求を送信しました、応答を待っています... 404 Not Found
2019-12-05 03:39:10 エラー 404: Not Found。

[waddlesplash]

Yes, we don't support this anymore. Just use x86_64.

[X512]

Replying to waddlesplash:

Yes, we don't support this anymore. Just use x86_64.

In such case perfomance issue should be fixed in gcc2 build because 32 bit x86 is Haiku R1 target.

[pulkomandy]

Both architectures will be supported for R1.

[waddlesplash]

If you are comparing 64-bit Windows 7 and 32-bit Haiku, that's not a fair comparison, 64-bit will of course be faster due to the compilers usage of SSE2. And GCC2 is as noted a worse compiler, so again, I'm not sure there's much we can fix for 32-bit here.

[X512]

Replying to waddlesplash:

If you are comparing 64-bit Windows 7 and 32-bit Haiku, that's not a fair comparison, 64-bit will of course be faster due to the compilers usage of SSE2.

This is 32 bit only PC. Windows 7 is 32 bit.

And GCC2 is as noted a worse compiler, so again, I'm not sure there's much we can fix for 32-bit here.

There is a chance, that code related to thread switching can be optimized for GCC2.

[X512]

Tests made on 64 bit PC also shows that Haiku is slower than Windows, so there is room for optimization even for modern GCC.

[waddlesplash]

We have no intention of trying to optimize the GCC2 builds.

No, the 64bit nightlies are as already mentioned debug builds. Running under a non KDEBUG build will probably close the remaining gap.

[X512]

PC, hrev55486

[X512]

Retested on hrev55486:

x86 4 cores: 42831.82729
x86_64 4 cores: 48412.98648
x86 1 core: 296494.5128
x86_64 1 core: 420672.8393

[X512]

Context switch benchmark between 2 teams.