Background: .mpy files are precompiled .py files, built using mpy-cross,
that contain compiled bytecode functions (and can also contain machine
code). The benefit of using an .mpy file over a .py file is that they are
faster to import and take less memory when importing. They are also
smaller on disk.
But the real benefit of .mpy files comes when they are frozen into the
firmware. This is done by loading the .mpy file during compilation of the
firmware and turning it into a set of big C data structures (the job of
mpy-tool.py), which are then compiled and downloaded into the ROM of a
device. These C data structures can be executed in-place, ie directly from
ROM. This makes importing even faster because there is very little to do,
and also means such frozen modules take up much less RAM (because their
bytecode stays in ROM).
The downside of frozen code is that it requires recompiling and reflashing
the entire firmware. This can be a big barrier to entry, slows down
development time, and makes it harder to do OTA updates of frozen code
(because the whole firmware must be updated).
This commit attempts to solve this problem by providing a solution that
sits between loading .mpy files into RAM and freezing them into the
firmware. The .mpy file format has been reworked so that it consists of
data and bytecode which is mostly static and ready to run in-place. If
these new .mpy files are located in flash/ROM which is memory addressable,
the .mpy file can be executed (mostly) in-place.
With this approach there is still a small amount of unpacking and linking
of the .mpy file that needs to be done when it's imported, but it's still
much better than loading an .mpy from disk into RAM (although not as good
as freezing .mpy files into the firmware).
The main trick to make static .mpy files is to adjust the bytecode so any
qstrs that it references now go through a lookup table to convert from
local qstr number in the module to global qstr number in the firmware.
That means the bytecode does not need linking/rewriting of qstrs when it's
loaded. Instead only a small qstr table needs to be built (and put in RAM)
at import time. This means the bytecode itself is static/constant and can
be used directly if it's in addressable memory. Also the qstr string data
in the .mpy file, and some constant object data, can be used directly.
Note that the qstr table is global to the module (ie not per function).
In more detail, in the VM what used to be (schematically):
qst = DECODE_QSTR_VALUE;
is now (schematically):
idx = DECODE_QSTR_INDEX;
qst = qstr_table[idx];
That allows the bytecode to be fixed at compile time and not need
relinking/rewriting of the qstr values. Only qstr_table needs to be linked
when the .mpy is loaded.
Incidentally, this helps to reduce the size of bytecode because what used
to be 2-byte qstr values in the bytecode are now (mostly) 1-byte indices.
If the module uses the same qstr more than two times then the bytecode is
smaller than before.
The following changes are measured for this commit compared to the
previous (the baseline):
- average 7%-9% reduction in size of .mpy files
- frozen code size is reduced by about 5%-7%
- importing .py files uses about 5% less RAM in total
- importing .mpy files uses about 4% less RAM in total
- importing .py and .mpy files takes about the same time as before
The qstr indirection in the bytecode has only a small impact on VM
performance. For stm32 on PYBv1.0 the performance change of this commit
is:
diff of scores (higher is better)
N=100 M=100 baseline -> this-commit diff diff% (error%)
bm_chaos.py 371.07 -> 357.39 : -13.68 = -3.687% (+/-0.02%)
bm_fannkuch.py 78.72 -> 77.49 : -1.23 = -1.563% (+/-0.01%)
bm_fft.py 2591.73 -> 2539.28 : -52.45 = -2.024% (+/-0.00%)
bm_float.py 6034.93 -> 5908.30 : -126.63 = -2.098% (+/-0.01%)
bm_hexiom.py 48.96 -> 47.93 : -1.03 = -2.104% (+/-0.00%)
bm_nqueens.py 4510.63 -> 4459.94 : -50.69 = -1.124% (+/-0.00%)
bm_pidigits.py 650.28 -> 644.96 : -5.32 = -0.818% (+/-0.23%)
core_import_mpy_multi.py 564.77 -> 581.49 : +16.72 = +2.960% (+/-0.01%)
core_import_mpy_single.py 68.67 -> 67.16 : -1.51 = -2.199% (+/-0.01%)
core_qstr.py 64.16 -> 64.12 : -0.04 = -0.062% (+/-0.00%)
core_yield_from.py 362.58 -> 354.50 : -8.08 = -2.228% (+/-0.00%)
misc_aes.py 429.69 -> 405.59 : -24.10 = -5.609% (+/-0.01%)
misc_mandel.py 3485.13 -> 3416.51 : -68.62 = -1.969% (+/-0.00%)
misc_pystone.py 2496.53 -> 2405.56 : -90.97 = -3.644% (+/-0.01%)
misc_raytrace.py 381.47 -> 374.01 : -7.46 = -1.956% (+/-0.01%)
viper_call0.py 576.73 -> 572.49 : -4.24 = -0.735% (+/-0.04%)
viper_call1a.py 550.37 -> 546.21 : -4.16 = -0.756% (+/-0.09%)
viper_call1b.py 438.23 -> 435.68 : -2.55 = -0.582% (+/-0.06%)
viper_call1c.py 442.84 -> 440.04 : -2.80 = -0.632% (+/-0.08%)
viper_call2a.py 536.31 -> 532.35 : -3.96 = -0.738% (+/-0.06%)
viper_call2b.py 382.34 -> 377.07 : -5.27 = -1.378% (+/-0.03%)
And for unix on x64:
diff of scores (higher is better)
N=2000 M=2000 baseline -> this-commit diff diff% (error%)
bm_chaos.py 13594.20 -> 13073.84 : -520.36 = -3.828% (+/-5.44%)
bm_fannkuch.py 60.63 -> 59.58 : -1.05 = -1.732% (+/-3.01%)
bm_fft.py 112009.15 -> 111603.32 : -405.83 = -0.362% (+/-4.03%)
bm_float.py 246202.55 -> 247923.81 : +1721.26 = +0.699% (+/-2.79%)
bm_hexiom.py 615.65 -> 617.21 : +1.56 = +0.253% (+/-1.64%)
bm_nqueens.py 215807.95 -> 215600.96 : -206.99 = -0.096% (+/-3.52%)
bm_pidigits.py 8246.74 -> 8422.82 : +176.08 = +2.135% (+/-3.64%)
misc_aes.py 16133.00 -> 16452.74 : +319.74 = +1.982% (+/-1.50%)
misc_mandel.py 128146.69 -> 130796.43 : +2649.74 = +2.068% (+/-3.18%)
misc_pystone.py 83811.49 -> 83124.85 : -686.64 = -0.819% (+/-1.03%)
misc_raytrace.py 21688.02 -> 21385.10 : -302.92 = -1.397% (+/-3.20%)
The code size change is (firmware with a lot of frozen code benefits the
most):
bare-arm: +396 +0.697%
minimal x86: +1595 +0.979% [incl +32(data)]
unix x64: +2408 +0.470% [incl +800(data)]
unix nanbox: +1396 +0.309% [incl -96(data)]
stm32: -1256 -0.318% PYBV10
cc3200: +288 +0.157%
esp8266: -260 -0.037% GENERIC
esp32: -216 -0.014% GENERIC[incl -1072(data)]
nrf: +116 +0.067% pca10040
rp2: -664 -0.135% PICO
samd: +844 +0.607% ADAFRUIT_ITSYBITSY_M4_EXPRESS
As part of this change the .mpy file format version is bumped to version 6.
And mpy-tool.py has been improved to provide a good visualisation of the
contents of .mpy files.
In summary: this commit changes the bytecode to use qstr indirection, and
reworks the .mpy file format to be simpler and allow .mpy files to be
executed in-place. Performance is not impacted too much. Eventually it
will be possible to store such .mpy files in a linear, read-only, memory-
mappable filesystem so they can be executed from flash/ROM. This will
essentially be able to replace frozen code for most applications.
Signed-off-by: Damien George <damien@micropython.org>
This commit removes all parts of code associated with the existing
MICROPY_OPT_CACHE_MAP_LOOKUP_IN_BYTECODE optimisation option, including the
-mcache-lookup-bc option to mpy-cross.
This feature originally provided a significant performance boost for Unix,
but wasn't able to be enabled for MCU targets (due to frozen bytecode), and
added significant extra complexity to generating and distributing .mpy
files.
The equivalent performance gain is now provided by the combination of
MICROPY_OPT_LOAD_ATTR_FAST_PATH and MICROPY_OPT_MAP_LOOKUP_CACHE (which has
been enabled on the unix port in the previous commit).
It's hard to provide precise performance numbers, but tests have been run
on a wide variety of architectures (x86-64, ARM Cortex, Aarch64, RISC-V,
xtensa) and they all generally agree on the qualitative improvements seen
by the combination of MICROPY_OPT_LOAD_ATTR_FAST_PATH and
MICROPY_OPT_MAP_LOOKUP_CACHE.
For example, on a "quiet" Linux x64 environment (i3-5010U @ 2.10GHz) the
change from CACHE_MAP_LOOKUP_IN_BYTECODE, to LOAD_ATTR_FAST_PATH combined
with MAP_LOOKUP_CACHE is:
diff of scores (higher is better)
N=2000 M=2000 bccache -> attrmapcache diff diff% (error%)
bm_chaos.py 13742.56 -> 13905.67 : +163.11 = +1.187% (+/-3.75%)
bm_fannkuch.py 60.13 -> 61.34 : +1.21 = +2.012% (+/-2.11%)
bm_fft.py 113083.20 -> 114793.68 : +1710.48 = +1.513% (+/-1.57%)
bm_float.py 256552.80 -> 243908.29 : -12644.51 = -4.929% (+/-1.90%)
bm_hexiom.py 521.93 -> 625.41 : +103.48 = +19.826% (+/-0.40%)
bm_nqueens.py 197544.25 -> 217713.12 : +20168.87 = +10.210% (+/-3.01%)
bm_pidigits.py 8072.98 -> 8198.75 : +125.77 = +1.558% (+/-3.22%)
misc_aes.py 17283.45 -> 16480.52 : -802.93 = -4.646% (+/-0.82%)
misc_mandel.py 99083.99 -> 128939.84 : +29855.85 = +30.132% (+/-5.88%)
misc_pystone.py 83860.10 -> 82592.56 : -1267.54 = -1.511% (+/-2.27%)
misc_raytrace.py 21490.40 -> 22227.23 : +736.83 = +3.429% (+/-1.88%)
This shows that the new optimisations are at least as good as the existing
inline-bytecode-caching, and are sometimes much better (because the new
ones apply caching to a wider variety of map lookups).
The new optimisations can also benefit code generated by the native
emitter, because they apply to the runtime rather than the generated code.
The improvement for the native emitter when LOAD_ATTR_FAST_PATH and
MAP_LOOKUP_CACHE are enabled is (same Linux environment as above):
diff of scores (higher is better)
N=2000 M=2000 native -> nat-attrmapcache diff diff% (error%)
bm_chaos.py 14130.62 -> 15464.68 : +1334.06 = +9.441% (+/-7.11%)
bm_fannkuch.py 74.96 -> 76.16 : +1.20 = +1.601% (+/-1.80%)
bm_fft.py 166682.99 -> 168221.86 : +1538.87 = +0.923% (+/-4.20%)
bm_float.py 233415.23 -> 265524.90 : +32109.67 = +13.756% (+/-2.57%)
bm_hexiom.py 628.59 -> 734.17 : +105.58 = +16.796% (+/-1.39%)
bm_nqueens.py 225418.44 -> 232926.45 : +7508.01 = +3.331% (+/-3.10%)
bm_pidigits.py 6322.00 -> 6379.52 : +57.52 = +0.910% (+/-5.62%)
misc_aes.py 20670.10 -> 27223.18 : +6553.08 = +31.703% (+/-1.56%)
misc_mandel.py 138221.11 -> 152014.01 : +13792.90 = +9.979% (+/-2.46%)
misc_pystone.py 85032.14 -> 105681.44 : +20649.30 = +24.284% (+/-2.25%)
misc_raytrace.py 19800.01 -> 23350.73 : +3550.72 = +17.933% (+/-2.79%)
In summary, compared to MICROPY_OPT_CACHE_MAP_LOOKUP_IN_BYTECODE, the new
MICROPY_OPT_LOAD_ATTR_FAST_PATH and MICROPY_OPT_MAP_LOOKUP_CACHE options:
- are simpler;
- take less code size;
- are faster (generally);
- work with code generated by the native emitter;
- can be used on embedded targets with a small and constant RAM overhead;
- allow the same .mpy bytecode to run on all targets.
See #7680 for further discussion. And see also #7653 for a discussion
about simplifying mpy-cross options.
Signed-off-by: Jim Mussared <jim.mussared@gmail.com>
This patch compresses the second part of the bytecode prelude which
contains the source file name, function name, source-line-number mapping
and cell closure information. This part of the prelude now begins with a
single varible length unsigned integer which encodes 2 numbers, being the
byte-size of the following 2 sections in the header: the "source info
section" and the "closure section". After decoding this variable unsigned
integer it's possible to skip over one or both of these sections very
easily.
This scheme saves about 2 bytes for most functions compared to the original
format: one in the case that there are no closure cells, and one because
padding was eliminated.
The start of the bytecode prelude contains 6 numbers telling the amount of
stack needed for the Python values and exceptions, and the signature of the
function. Prior to this patch these numbers were all encoded one after the
other (2x variable unsigned integers, then 4x bytes), but using so many
bytes is unnecessary.
An entropy analysis of around 150,000 bytecode functions from the CPython
standard library showed that the optimal Shannon coding would need about
7.1 bits on average to encode these 6 numbers, compared to the existing 48
bits.
This patch attempts to get close to this optimal value by packing the 6
numbers into a single, varible-length unsigned integer via bit-wise
interleaving. The interleaving scheme is chosen to minimise the average
number of bytes needed, and at the same time keep the scheme simple enough
so it can be implemented without too much overhead in code size or speed.
The scheme requires about 10.5 bits on average to store the 6 numbers.
As a result most functions which originally took 6 bytes to encode these 6
numbers now need only 1 byte (in 80% of cases).
Damien George
Jim Mussared
Damien George