[racket] Small and short-lived data structures

On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 12:47 PM, Matthias Felleisen
<matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> In general, it is a mistaken assumption however that even in a
> 'managed' language -- such as Java or Racket -- mutation is still
> faster than de/allocation of short-lived data structures. If you
> choose to go with 'managed' language, you need to adapt your
> programming style to the new context.

Sadly, this assumption is often right for Racket today, even though we
have a pretty good allocator.  Here's a simple benchmark:
https://gist.github.com/samth/7088570

This just passes multiple arguments between two functions in three
ways: with a cons, with multiple values, and by mutating an mcons
(plus a direct version with two local variables).  In all cases, it's
as fast as I can make it, using unsafe operations where appropriate.

Here are some representative timings:

[samth at huor:~/sw/plt/racket/collects/racket/match (master) plt] r /tmp/bench.rkt
'direct
cpu time: 40 real time: 44 gc time: 0
'cons
cpu time: 72 real time: 73 gc time: 12
'values
cpu time: 192 real time: 191 gc time: 0
'mcons
cpu time: 48 real time: 51 gc time: 0

Direct is always fastest, multiple values are very slow, and cons is
always slower than mcons.  Even if we ignore GC time, the functional
version is still always slower.

Sam