Language-side Foreign Function Interfaces with NativeBoost

Camillo Bruni, Luc Fabresse, Stéphane Ducasse, Igor Stasenko

IWST 2013

Language-side Foreign Function Interfaces

with NativeBoost

IWST 2013 @ Annecy

Outline

1. Context

2. Existing Solutions

3. NativeBoost

4. Speed Comparison of NativeBoost with other FFIs

5. NativeBoost Internals

6. Conclusion & Future Work

2

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Context

3

CairoOpenGL

LibC

Language

Virtual Machine (VM)

Chipmunk

...

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Context

4

Language


How to interact with external libraries?

CairoOpenGL

LibC

Chipmunk

...

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Existing Solutions

Language-side Library

VM Extension

VM Plugin

Foreign Function Interface

VM-level

Language-level

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Existing Solutions


VM Extension

VM Plugin


VM-level

Language-level

6

costly

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Existing Solutions


VM Extension

VM Plugin


VM-level

Language-level

7

costly

low-level

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Existing Solutions


VM Extension

VM Plugin


VM-level

Language-level

8

slowfast

costly

low-level

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NativeBoost

A language-side and fast

FFI implementation

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Language-side

• Extensible

• Easy to use

• no VM code needed

• no low-level code (C wrapper) needed


Fast

Transparent generation of Assembly code

from the language-side

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NativeBoost Example

12

char* getenv(const char*)

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NativeBoost Example

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NativeBoost Example

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Regular Smalltalk methodwith one argument

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NativeBoost Example

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A pragma indicating that #primitiveNativeCall of #NativeBoost pluginshould be executed when this method is executed

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NativeBoost Example

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NativeBoost Example

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types annotation used to generate marshalling code


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NativeBoost Example

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the value to be passed when calling out

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NativeBoost Example

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the external library address in which the function is looked up

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Speed Comparisons

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• NativeBoost

• Alien FFI

• C-FFI

• LuaJIT

• Callouts

• Marshalling

• Callbacks


Callout Evaluation

uint clock(void)

Average time calling out

0%

50%

100%

150%

NativeBoost Alien C-FFI LuaJIT

faster

slower


0%

100%

200%

300%


Marshalling int

int abs(int)


0%

100%

200%

300%

400%


Marshalling char*/String

int printf(char*,int,int)




char* getenv( char* )

100%

300%

1000%




char* getenv( char* )

100%

300%

1000%



Marshalling structs

100%

400%

1000%

void cairo_matrix_multiply ( cairo_matrix_t *result, cairo_matrix_t *a, cairo_matrix_t *b)



Callbacks Evaluation

30%

100%

void qsort ( void *base, size_t nel, size_t width, int (*compare)(const void*, const void*))

not

su

ppor

ted

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Insights into NativeBoost Internals

28

NBExample getenv: ‘PATH’

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NativeBoost Plugin

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NativeBoost Plugin

Fail if no native codeassociated with #getenv:

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NativeBoost Plugin

1. generate native code for marshalling, ...2. associate it with #getenv:3. restart the method execution

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NativeBoost Plugin


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activate the native code associated with #getenv:


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Conclusion

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• NativeBoost-FFI is:

• Language-side: extensible, high-level code only

• Fast compared to other Smalltalk FFI

• Needs optimizations on Callbacks but that would require strong VM support

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Future Work

• Improve NativeBoost Callback performance

• Reuse Alien’s VM Callback support?

• Better integration of NativeBoost with the JIT

• Do not leave JIT-mode when activating a NB method

35

Camillo Bruni, Luc Fabresse, Stéphane Ducasse, Igor Stasenko

IWST 2013

Language-side Foreign Function Interfaces

with NativeBoost

Technology

Language-side Foreign Function Interfaces with NativeBoost