Mihaela Mihaljevic
f6a093fe4b
The descendant and attribute walks tested every candidate node through a
closure that called matchesTree / matchesAttribute with the step's NodeTest and
the evaluation namespaces dictionary:
descendants(of: tree) { matchesTree($0, step.test, on: step.axis, context.namespaces) }
That passes the namespaces dictionary (and the NodeTest's associated string) by
value on every call, so a //name-style query over a wide document carried a
dictionary retain/release on each of tens of thousands of nodes, on the
traversal that dominates evaluation.
compiledTreeTest, compiledAttributeTest, and compiledNodeTest resolve the parts
that do not change as the walk moves (the axis principal kind, whether eval-time
bindings are in effect, the prefix-wildcard shape of the name) exactly once and
return a tight per-node closure capturing only the local name. The selected
nodes are identical to the unfused matchesTree / matchesAttribute / matches.
Measured xpath ~35% faster on the 20k-item generated corpus via a same-state
A/B, from ~2.0x to ~1.3x slower than libxml2. The full suite, the Apache Xalan
XSLT gold-output corpus, and the WASM build stay green. XPathCompiledNodeTestTests
is an exhaustive differential asserting each compiled closure equals the
function it specializes across every node, test, axis, and binding.
8.9 KiB
8.9 KiB
Benchmarks: PureXML vs libxml2 (#139)
bash scripts/benchmark.sh [items] [iterations] generates a deterministic
corpus (never vendored), builds PureXML in release and the C driver against
the macOS SDK's libxml2, runs both over the same bytes with internal timing
(best-of-N, IO excluded), and prints the comparison. Both drivers also
cross-check the same XPath count, so every benchmark run doubles as a
cross-implementation correctness check.
Baseline (first measurement)
20000 items, ~4.2 MB, best of 5, Apple Silicon (Studio), release builds:
| operation | PureXML | libxml2 | ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| parse | 0.49 s | 0.016 s | ~30x |
| serialize | 0.059 s | 0.012 s | ~5x |
| xpath | 0.42 s | 0.012 s | ~36x |
These are the honest starting numbers the #139 optimization passes burn down; the table updates as passes land, never silently.
Current record (size series + real corpora, best of 3)
| corpus | parse | serialize | xpath |
|---|---|---|---|
| generated 4.2 MB | 0.34 s (18.7x) | 0.064 s (5.5x) | 0.15 s (11.9x) |
| generated 42 MB | 3.49 s (18.7x) | 0.63 s (5.6x) | 1.57 s (11.7x) |
| generated 210 MB | 19.3 s (19.7x) | 3.19 s (5.6x) | 9.4 s (libxml2: refused) |
| NASA ADC 25 MB (real) | 1.73 s (24.5x) | 0.42 s (8.0x) | 0.76 s (19.4x) |
| SwissProt 115 MB (real) | 11.0 s (22.0x) | 1.77 s (5.5x) | 5.0 s (18.7x) |
Two findings only the large corpora could surface:
- PureXML's document-order sort was quadratic on flat fan-outs (42 MB: 27 s in XPath, ratio 190x). Fixed; and the first fix attempt was itself quadratic in a worse place (an eager sibling-table built per predicate evaluation: one hour at 42 MB), caught by sampling the live run. The cache now early-outs single-node sets and builds a parent's table only on its second lookup. XPath at 42 MB: 27.1 s -> 1.57 s.
- libxml2 refuses XPath evaluation past its XPATH_MAX_NODESET_LENGTH cap (10M nodes): the 210 MB corpus query returns NULL by design. PureXML completes it in 9.4 s. The protective counterpart for hostile input is tracked as #143.
Scaling: all three PureXML operations are linear in document size (ratios flat from 4 MB to 210 MB), and there is no 2 GB integer cliff (64-bit offsets throughout; libxml2's xmlReadMemory takes an int byte count).
Optimization log
| pass | change | parse | xpath | serialize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| baseline | - | 0.494 s (30x) | 0.413 s (37x) | 0.061 s (5.5x) |
| 1 | allocation-free Reader.matches() | 0.414 s (26x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 2 | byte-backed Reader (owned UTF-8 storage, pointer-decoded scalars, byte-level literal match/consume) | 0.375 s (23x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 3 | bulk content runs (plain-ASCII character data scanned and consumed at the byte level, String built once per run) | 0.335 s (20x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 4 | byte-level dispatch + name/attribute scanning (non-buffering peekByte, byte-mode skipSpace, all-ASCII takeASCIIName, attributeRunBytes); keeps the lookahead buffer empty so the existing byte fast paths engage |
0.217 s (13x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 5 | sawAmpersand short-circuit (ampersand-free text returns verbatim, skipping the reference-decode/split/findings pass) and detecting the text-run-closing < via peekByte instead of buffering it (the buffered < had cascaded the next element's whole dispatch and name scan onto the Character path) |
0.157 s (9.5x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 6 | byte-level markup dispatch (the single byte after < selects end-tag/PI/declaration/start-tag, replacing up to five literal string comparisons per element with one byte peek) |
0.147 s (9.0x) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 7 | sawAmpersand short-circuit for attribute values (the byte scanner notes any &; an ampersand-free value skips the reference-decode pass and its full re-scan); measured against same-state baseline, every run below every baseline run |
0.143 s (~4% vs baseline) | unchanged | unchanged |
| 8 | serialize escaping fast path (text/attribute/comment/PI return the value unchanged when no character needs escaping, instead of rebuilding it character by character; byte-level scan for the escapable bytes) | unchanged | unchanged | 0.032 s (2.7x, from 5.5x) |
| 9 | skip cross-context node-set de-duplication on a single context or a disjoint axis (child/attribute/namespace/self); the Set<Node> hashing and copying was pure overhead where no duplicate can arise, same output (same-state A/B, ~28%) |
unchanged | 0.097 s (10x, from 13x) | unchanged |
| 10 | // descendant fusion (descendant-or-self::node()/child::X[P] compiled to descendant::X[P] when P is non-positional), avoiding the whole-subtree intermediate context; guarded so positional predicates keep their per-parent meaning, adversarially reviewed for semantic transparency |
unchanged | 0.063 s (~7x, from 10x) | unchanged |
| 11 | drop the redundant Set de-duplication when sorting a path result: evaluateSteps already yields a duplicate-free node-set, so only the document-order sort is needed (each skipped insert was a copy of a node wrapping a side-table-refcounted tree node); same-state A/B, ~9% |
unchanged | 0.058 s (~6x, from ~7x) | unchanged |
| 12 | skip the document-order sort for a single forward-axis step from one context: AxisNavigation produces child/descendant/descendant-or-self/self/following/following-sibling already in document order with no duplicates, so the sort is redundant (adversarially reviewed for order correctness; same-state A/B, ~7%) |
unchanged | 0.055 s (~6x) | unchanged |
| 13 | single-accumulator descendant traversal: descendants(of:) recursed on wrapped nodes and concatenated a fresh array at every node (append(contentsOf: descendants(of: child))), O(n x depth) allocation churn; rewritten to recurse on the raw tree node with one shared inout accumulator, O(n). Same output (same-state A/B, ~46%) |
unchanged | 0.032 s (~3x, from ~6x) | unchanged |
| 14 | fuse the node test into the descendant walk: a node the step's test rejects is no longer wrapped in an XPath.Node (so never retained); matches delegates to a tree-node matchesTree so there is one source of truth, and the traversal applies it during the walk. Identical node-set (adversarially equivalence-reviewed; same-state A/B, ~11%) |
unchanged | 0.028 s (~2.5x) | unchanged |
| 15 | the same test fusion for the attribute axis (matchesAttribute): a [@name='...'] predicate built every attribute node per element and filtered to one; it now wraps only the matching attribute, saving the owner retain and the qualified-name/value copies for the rest. Identical node-set (adversarially equivalence-reviewed; same-state A/B, ~20%) |
unchanged | 0.022 s (~2.0x) | unchanged |
| 16 | share the focus-independent evaluation state via an Environment reference: focused(on:position:size:) (called once per node of a predicate's input) copied the variables, functions, and namespace dictionaries every time; it now copies only node/position/size and shares one reference. Same semantics (same-state A/B, ~16%) |
unchanged | 0.020 s (~2.0x) | unchanged |
| 17 | compile the step's node test once per query instead of re-evaluating it per node: the descendant/attribute walks called { matchesTree($0, step.test, on: step.axis, context.namespaces) }, passing the namespaces dictionary (and the NodeTest's associated string) by value on every one of tens of thousands of nodes, so the dominant traversal carried a dictionary retain/release per node. compiledTreeTest/compiledAttributeTest/compiledNodeTest resolve the axis principal kind, the binding state, and the name shape once and return a tight closure capturing only the local name. Equivalent to matchesTree/matchesAttribute/matches (exhaustive differential test + adversarial review; same-state A/B, ~35%) |
unchanged | 0.013 s (~1.3x) | unchanged |
Profile findings (first sample, parse path)
Top of stack, release build: String.Iterator.next (the per-character pull closure chain), _stringCompareWithSmolCheck (Character equality in matches/peek), String._uncheckedFromUTF8 and _allASCII (small-string materialization), bridgeObjectRelease/swift_release (ARC on Character buffers), UnicodeScalarView.distance. The Reader's architecture: one closure call per scalar, [Character] lookahead, Character-typed classification. The structural fix is a byte-level (UTF-8) scanner with scalar classification tables; that is its own #139 pass, designed, not patched.
Known structure of the gap
- Parse and XPath dominate; serialize is closest.
- The scanner-vs-tree split needs the SAX stage, blocked on #142 (the public streaming surface is internal today).
- Suspects to profile, in order: Character/grapheme-based scanning versus byte scanning, per-scalar reader buffering (#135), ARC traffic in tree construction, XPath node-set materialization on every axis step.
Rules
- Optimize only what these numbers indict, one suspect per pass, with the before/after recorded here.
- The corpus generator changes only with a note here, since ratios are only comparable over identical corpora.