I've done something like this in the past.
I'd expect the performance to be similar to MetaFn. In either case, I think
you have a wrapper class that carries the additional data, and one level of
indirection for invoke or invokePrim. My benchmarks results so far seem to
show the indirection gets optimized away eventually.
I think the main difference is that the function now implements something
like IPersistentMap rather than IObj. The problem I had was if the function
was some Map-like object to begin with, I'd get confused about what was
'data' and what was 'metadata'.
On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 12:04 PM, Justin Smith <noisesm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've had good luck with an approach suggested by Kevin Downey, defining a
> defrecord that implements IFn so that it works when called and applied, and
> transparently supporting attached data as if it were a hash-map. It's not
> too hard to implement if you know the precise arg count you need to
> support, and I'd be interested to see how the performance compares.
>
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 11:57 AM John McDonald <palisades.la...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 2nd issue: Benchmarks
>>
>> I use both criterium and simple 'run repeatedly and divide the clock
>> time'.
>>
>> I've had trouble getting consistent results from run to run with either.
>>
>> Most recently (yesterday) I've added many more warmup runs, giving
>> HotSpot lots of time to do its stuff, which seems to be stabilizing the
>> results.
>> This might be unfair, because in practice a lot of important code might
>> never run that many times.
>> At least, it gives the limiting performance of code that runs a lot.
>>
>> Unfortunately, this benchmark is split over 3 github projects, so it
>> might be a little hard to follow.
>>
>> The task I'm timing is computing the sum of squares of the elements in a
>> moderately large (4m elements) double[] array (aka L2Norm).
>>
>> I've compared 8 implementations, all of which accumulate the sum in Java.
>>
>> 6.37ms inline --- naive sum of squares in Java.
>> 6.37ms invokestatic --- call a static method in Java to square the
>> elements.
>> 6.38ms primitive --- calls square.invokePrim(x[i]) to square the
>> elements
>> 6.37ms boxprimitive --- calls square.invoke(x[i]) to square the elements
>> 6.37ms funxprimitive --- calls funxSquare.invokePrim(), where
>> funxSquare is square wrapped with MetaFn, an experiment metadata wrapper.
>> 6.38ms funxboxed --- calls funxSquare.invoke()
>> 43.55ms boxed --- calls boxedSquare.invoke() , where boxedSquare is a
>> version of square without type hints.
>> 151.61ms cljmeta --- calls metaSquare.invoke(), where metasquare is the
>> result of (with-meta square {...})
>>
>> Clojure 1.8.0, Oracle JDK 1.8, Win10, Lenovo X1 i5-7300U.
>> Sum of squares for each of 2 double[4194304], in 2 threads, concurrently.
>>
>> boxed and cljmeta create a lot of garbage, causing their clock times to
>> be more variable, depending on exactly what GC does..
>> It's possible they appear relatively faster with a small number of total
>> calls, if they don't trigger a GC, and HotSpot doesn't fully optimize the
>> others.
>> I think this is a valid usage pattern, but many many calls to small
>> functions is the case that I'm interested in at present.
>>
>>
>> Main scripts:
>>
>> Using criterium:
>> https://github.com/palisades-lakes/function-experiments/
>> blob/dynesty/src/scripts/clojure/palisades/lakes/funx/l2norm/bench.clj
>>
>> Running the benchmark 4k times and dividing the clock time:
>> https://github.com/palisades-lakes/function-experiments/
>> blob/dynesty/src/scripts/clojure/palisades/lakes/funx/l2norm/msec.clj
>>
>> These both use general benchmarking code from
>> https://github.com/palisades-lakes/benchtools
>>
>> The experimental metadata function wrapper is in:
>> https://github.com/palisades-lakes/dynamic-functions/blob/
>> dynesty/src/main/java/palisades/lakes/dynafun/java/MetaFn.java
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 20, 2017 at 11:17 AM, John McDonald <
>> palisades.la...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the quick response.
>>>
>>> One issue at a time:
>>>
>>> (A) Putting metadata on Vars instead of on the functions themselves:
>>>
>>> I need to be able to associate facts with the function instances. I
>>> can't rely on every function being bound to a Var.
>>> For example, I'm constructing cost functions for machine learning, and
>>> other applications, by summing, composing, etc. other functions.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 11:34 PM, Alex Miller <a...@puredanger.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 8:01:07 PM UTC-5, John Alan McDonald
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd like to be able to do something like:
>>>>>
>>>>> (defn square ^double [^double x] (* x x))
>>>>> (def meta-square (with-meta square {:domain Double/TYPE :codomain
>>>>> Double/TYPE :range {:from 0.0 :to Double/POSITIVE_INFINITY :also
>>>>> Double/NaN}})
>>>>>
>>>>> https://clojure.org/reference/metadata
>>>>> <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fclojure.org%2Freference%2Fmetadata&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHbXrwRkSRL6pFAprN1DcrQPUEbJA>
>>>>> says "Symbols and collections support metadata...". Nothing about
>>>>> whether any other types do or do not support metadata.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Functions are probably the big missing thing in that list of types that
>>>> have metadata that you can modify.
>>>>
>>>> A few other things also have metadata that can be set at construction
>>>> and read but not modified after construction: namespaces and the reference
>>>> types (vars, atoms, refs, agents).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> The code above works, at least in the sense that it doesn't throw
>>>>> exceptions, and meta-square is a function that returns the right values,
>>>>> and has the right metadata.
>>>>> That's because square is an instance of a class that extends
>>>>> AFunction, which implements IObj (https://github.com/clojure/
>>>>> clojure/blob/master/src/jvm/clojure/lang/AFunction.java#L18).
>>>>>
>>>>> It doesn't work, in the sense that it violates "Two objects that
>>>>> differ only in metadata are equal." from https://clojure.org/
>>>>> reference/metadata. That is,
>>>>> (= square meta-square)
>>>>> returns false.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think the tricky thing here is that functions are only equal if they
>>>> are identical. Perhaps it would make sense to implement equals in the
>>>> function hierarchy to somehow "unwrap" the meta wrappers. I'm not sure if
>>>> that even makes sense.
>>>>
>>>> Another option here is this, which I think would be more typical:
>>>>
>>>> (def ^{:domain Double/TYPE :codomain Double/TYPE :range {:from 0.0 :to
>>>> Double/POSITIVE_INFINITY :also Double/NaN}} meta-square square)
>>>>
>>>> that puts the meta on the var (meta-square), not on the function
>>>> instance itself. In this case equality works and the invocation timing
>>>> should be about the same since in both cases you're going through the var
>>>> to invoke the identical function. You can retrieve the meta with (meta
>>>> #'meta-square) since it's on the var.
>>>>
>>>> For my purposes, what really matters is that calling meta-square has
>>>>> roughly 30 times the cost of square itself (and about 3 times the cost of
>>>>> a
>>>>> version without type hints).
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I see the overhead of your meta-square as more like 2 times the cost in
>>>> a quick test, not sure how you're testing. I'm using 1.9.0-beta1 and Java 8
>>>> and timing 100,000 invocations over a series of runs. There's a lot of
>>>> variability - using something like Criterium would yield better data.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> The reason is that meta-square is an instance of a class that extends
>>>>> RestFn (https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/jvm/
>>>>> clojure/lang/AFunction.java#L26), whose invoke() methods are
>>>>> expensive.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, for my purposes, it would actually be better if "Two objects
>>>>> that differ only in metadata are NOT equal." So perhaps I shouldn't be
>>>>> using metadata at all. It just seems
>>>>>
>>>>> Options:
>>>>>
>>>>> (1) Add a meta field to clojure.lang.AFunction (and fix equals and
>>>>> hashcode). I presume the reason there isn't already a meta field is to
>>>>> keep
>>>>> functions as light weight as possible. Are there good benchmarks that I
>>>>> could use to measure the cost of adding an almost always empty field?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I think it would add the cost of an object ref (prob 32 or 64 bits) to
>>>> every function object and I don't think it matters if it's empty or not. I
>>>> don't really know the reason for the current design, would require some
>>>> research. There are a LOT of potential considerations here with respect to
>>>> backwards compatibility, etc. Any change like this would be treated very
>>>> carefully. I do not think the need is necessarily worth such a change, but
>>>> it's hard to weigh that.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> (2) Experiments with a mechanical wrapper class (
>>>>> https://github.com/palisades-lakes/dynamic-functions/blob/
>>>>> dynesty/src/main/java/palisades/lakes/dynafun/java/MetaFn.java) show
>>>>> almost no overhead, but extending that to cover every possible combination
>>>>> of clojure.lang.IFn$DD, clojure.lang.IFn$DLD, ..., is impractical.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's what code gen is for.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> (3) Use asm to create a new class that extends the original function's
>>>>> class and implements IObj in the obvious way.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The asm included inside Clojure should be considered an internal
>>>> implementation detail, subject to version and API changes without warning.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> My short term plan is (2), ignoring the equals violation, and
>>>>> implementing primitive interface wrappers as needed.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Will the var version above satisfy?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Are there problems with (3) asm, as a long term solution?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As mentioned above, you should not rely on this being available or free
>>>> from breakage.
>>>>
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>>>
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