After much testing I found what is causing the regression in 16.04 and
later. There are several distinct causes which are attributed to the
choices made in debian/rules and the changes in GCC.
Cause #1: the decision to compile `Modules/_math.c` with `-fPIC` *and* link
it statically into the python executable [1]. This causes the majority of
the slowdown. This may be a bug in GCC or simply a constraint, I didn't
find anything specific on this topic, although there are a lot of old bug
reports regarding the interaction of -fPIC with -flto.
Cause #2: the enablement of `fpectl` [2], specifically the passage of
`--with-fpectl` to `configure`. fpectl is disabled in python.org builds by
default and its use is discouraged. Yet, Debian builds enable it
unconditionally, and it seems to cause a significant performance
degradation. It's much less noticeable on 14.04 with GCC 4.8.0, but on
more recent releases the performance difference seems to be larger.
Plausible Cause #3: stronger stack smashing protection in 16.04, which uses
--fstack-protector-strong, whereas 14.04 and earlier used
--fstack-protector (with lesser performance overhead).
Also, debian/rules limits the scope of PGO's PROFILE_TASK to 377 test
suites vs upstream's 397, which affects performance somewhat negatively,
but this is not definitive. What are the reasons behind the trimming of
the tests used for PGO?
Without fpectl, and without -fPIC on _math.c, 2.7.12 built on 16.04 is
slower than stock 2.7.6 on 14.04 by about 0.9% in my pyperformance runs
[3]. This is in contrast to a whopping 7.95% slowdown when comparing stock
versions.
Finally, a vanilla Python 2.7.12 build using GCC 5.4.0, default CFLAGS,
default PROFILE_TASK and default Modules/Setup.local consistently runs
faster in benchmarks than 2.7.6 (by about 0.7%), but I was not able to
pinpoint the exact reason for this difference.
Note: the percentages above are the relative change in the geometric mean
of pyperformance benchmark results.
[1]
https://git.launchpad.net/~usd-import-team/ubuntu/+source/python2.7/tree/debian/rules?h=ubuntu/xenial-updates#n421
[2]
https://git.launchpad.net/~usd-import-team/ubuntu/+source/python2.7/tree/debian/rules?h=ubuntu/xenial-updates#n117
[3]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L3_gxe-AOYJsXFwGZgFko8jaChB0dFPjK5oMO5T5vj4/edit?usp=sharing
Elvis
On Fri, Mar 3, 2017 at 10:27 AM, Louis Bouchard <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Le 03/03/2017 à 15:37, Louis Bouchard a écrit :
> > Hello,
> >
> > Le 03/03/2017 à 15:31, Victor Stinner a écrit :
> >>> Out of curiosity, I ran the set of benchmarks in two LXC containers
> running
> >>> centos7 (2.7.5 + gcc 4.8.5) and Fedora 25 (2.7.13 + gcc 6.3.x). The
> benchmarks
> >>> do run faster in 18 benchmarks, slower on 12 and insignificant for the
> rest (~33
> >>> from memory).
> >>
> >> "faster" or "slower" is relative: I would like to see the ?.??x
> >> faster/slower or percent value. Can you please share the result? I
> >> don't know what is the best output:
> >> python3 -m performance compare centos.json fedora.json
> >> or the new:
> >> python3 -m perf compare_to centos.json fedora.json --table --quiet
> >>
> >> Victor
> >>
> >
> > All the results, including the latest are in the spreadsheet here (cited
> in the
> > analysis document) :
> >
> > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pKCOpyu4HUyw9YtJugn6jzVGa_
> zeDmBVNzqmXHtM6gM/edit#gid=1548436297
> >
> > Third column is the ?.??x value that you are looking for, taken directly
> out of
> > the 'pyperformance analyze' results.
> >
> > I didn't know about the new options, I'll give it a spin & see if I can
> get a
> > better format.
>
> All the benchmark data using the new format have been uploaded to the
> spreadsheet. Each sheet is prefixed with pct_.
>
> HTH,
>
> Kind regards,
>
> ...Louis
>
>
> --
> Louis Bouchard
> Software engineer, Cloud & Sustaining eng.
> Canonical Ltd
> Ubuntu developer Debian Maintainer
> GPG : 429D 7A3B DD05 B6F8 AF63 B9C4 8B3D 867C 823E 7A61
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