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 allows the compiler to merge strings: e.g. "update",
"difference_update" and "symmetric_difference_update" will all point to the
same memory.
No functional change.
The size reduction depends on the number of qstrs in the build. The change
this commit brings is:
bare-arm: -4 -0.007%
minimal x86: +150 +0.092% [incl +48(data)]
unix x64: -608 -0.118%
unix nanbox: -572 -0.126% [incl +32(data)]
stm32: -1392 -0.352% PYBV10
cc3200: -448 -0.244%
esp8266: -1208 -0.173% GENERIC
esp32: -1028 -0.068% GENERIC[incl -1020(data)]
nrf: -440 -0.252% pca10040
rp2: -1072 -0.217% PICO
samd: -368 -0.264% ADAFRUIT_ITSYBITSY_M4_EXPRESS
Performance is also improved (on bare metal at least) for the
core_import_mpy_multi.py, core_import_mpy_single.py and core_qstr.py
performance benchmarks.
Originally at adafruit#4583
Signed-off-by: Artyom Skrobov <tyomitch@gmail.com>
It practically does the same as qstr_from_str and was only used in one
place, which should actually use the compile-time MP_QSTR_XXX form for
consistency; qstr_from_str is for runtime strings only.
The idea here is that there's a moderate amount of ROM used up by exception
text. Obviously we try to keep the messages short, and the code can enable
terse errors, but it still adds up. Listed below is the total string data
size for various ports:
bare-arm 2860
minimal 2876
stm32 8926 (PYBV11)
cc3200 3751
esp32 5721
This commit implements compression of these strings. It takes advantage of
the fact that these strings are all 7-bit ascii and extracts the top 128
frequently used words from the messages and stores them packed (dropping
their null-terminator), then uses (0x80 | index) inside strings to refer to
these common words. Spaces are automatically added around words, saving
more bytes. This happens transparently in the build process, mirroring the
steps that are used to generate the QSTR data. The MP_COMPRESSED_ROM_TEXT
macro wraps any literal string that should compressed, and it's
automatically decompressed in mp_decompress_rom_string.
There are many schemes that could be used for the compression, and some are
included in py/makecompresseddata.py for reference (space, Huffman, ngram,
common word). Results showed that the common-word compression gets better
results. This is before counting the increased cost of the Huffman
decoder. This might be slightly counter-intuitive, but this data is
extremely repetitive at a word-level, and the byte-level entropy coder
can't quite exploit that as efficiently. Ideally one would combine both
approaches, but for now the common-word approach is the one that is used.
For additional comparison, the size of the raw data compressed with gzip
and zlib is calculated, as a sort of proxy for a lower entropy bound. With
this scheme we come within 15% on stm32, and 30% on bare-arm (i.e. we use
x% more bytes than the data compressed with gzip -- not counting the code
overhead of a decoder, and how this would be hypothetically implemented).
The feature is disabled by default and can be enabled by setting
MICROPY_ROM_TEXT_COMPRESSION at the Makefile-level.
The technique of using alloca is how dotted import names are composed in
mp_import_from and mp_builtin___import__, so use the same technique in the
compiler. This puts less pressure on the heap (only the stack is used if
the qstr already exists, and if it doesn't exist then the standard qstr
block memory is used for the new qstr rather than a separate chunk of the
heap) and reduces overall code size.
The code conventions suggest using header guards, but do not define how
those should look like and instead point to existing files. However, not
all existing files follow the same scheme, sometimes omitting header guards
altogether, sometimes using non-standard names, making it easy to
accidentally pick a "wrong" example.
This commit ensures that all header files of the MicroPython project (that
were not simply copied from somewhere else) follow the same pattern, that
was already present in the majority of files, especially in the py folder.
The rules are as follows.
Naming convention:
* start with the words MICROPY_INCLUDED
* contain the full path to the file
* replace special characters with _
In addition, there are no empty lines before #ifndef, between #ifndef and
one empty line before #endif. #endif is followed by a comment containing
the name of the guard macro.
py/grammar.h cannot use header guards by design, since it has to be
included multiple times in a single C file. Several other files also do not
need header guards as they are only used internally and guaranteed to be
included only once:
* MICROPY_MPHALPORT_H
* mpconfigboard.h
* mpconfigport.h
* mpthreadport.h
* pin_defs_*.h
* qstrdefs*.h
When there're C files to be (re)compiled, they're all passed first to
preprocessor. QSTR references are extracted from preprocessed output and
split per original C file. Then all available qstr files (including those
generated previously) are catenated together. Only if the resulting content
has changed, the output file is written (causing almost global rebuild
to pick up potentially renumbered qstr's). Otherwise, it's not updated
to not cause spurious rebuilds. Related make rules are split to minimize
amount of commands executed in the interim case (when some C files were
updated, but no qstrs were changed).
The config variable MICROPY_MODULE_FROZEN is now made of two separate
parts: MICROPY_MODULE_FROZEN_STR and MICROPY_MODULE_FROZEN_MPY. This
allows to have none, either or both of frozen strings and frozen mpy
files (aka frozen bytecode).
For builds where mp_uint_t is larger than size_t, it doesn't make
sense to use such a wide type for qstrs. There can only be as many
qstrs as there is address space on the machine, so size_t is the correct
type to use.
Saves about 3000 bytes of code size when building unix/ port with
MICROPY_OBJ_REPR_D.
This patch consolidates all global variables in py/ core into one place,
in a global structure. Root pointers are all located together to make
GC tracing easier and more efficient.
Blanket wide to all .c and .h files. Some files originating from ST are
difficult to deal with (license wise) so it was left out of those.
Also merged modpyb.h, modos.h, modstm.h and modtime.h in stmhal/.
The autogenerated header files have been moved about, and an extra
include dir has been added, which means you can give a custom
BUILD=newbuilddir option to make, and everything "just works"
Also tidied up the way the different Makefiles build their include-
directory flags
Damien George
Artyom Skrobov
stijn
Jim Mussared
Damien George
Josh Lloyd
Alexander Steffen
Paul Sokolovsky
Chris Angelico
Andrew Scheller
Dave Hylands