[pypy-dev] Interpreter level array implementation

[Hakan Ardo]

Hi,
we got the simplest possible interpreter level implementation of an
array-like object running (in the interplevel-array branch) and it
executes my previous example about 2 times slower than optimized C.
Attached is the trace generated by the following example:

    img=array(640*480);   l=0;   i=0;
    while i<640*480:
        l+=img[i]
        i+=1

a simplified version of that trace is:

   1. [p0, p1, p2, p3, i4, p5, p6, p7, p8, p9, p10, f11, i]
   2. i14 = int_lt(i, 307200)
   3.   guard_true(i14, descr=<Guard1>)
   4.   guard_nonnull_class(p10, 145745952, descr=<Guard2>)
   5. img = getfield_gc(p10, descr=<GcPtrFieldDescr 8>)
   6. f17 = getarrayitem_gc(img, i, descr=<FloatArrayDescr>)
   7. f18 = float_add(f11, f17)
   8. i20 = int_add_ovf(i, 1)
   9.   guard_no_overflow(, descr=<Guard3>) #
  10. i23 = getfield_raw(149604768, descr=<SignedFieldDescr 0>)
  11. i25 = int_add(i23, 1)
  12. setfield_raw(149604768, i25, descr=<SignedFieldDescr 0>)
  13. i28 = int_and(i25, -2131755008)
  14. i29 = int_is_true(i28)
  15.   guard_false(i29, descr=<Guard4>)
  16. jump(p0, p1, p2, p3, 27, ConstPtr(ptr31), ConstPtr(ptr32),
           ConstPtr(ptr33), p8, p9, p10, f18, i20)

Does these operation more or less correspond to assembler
instructions? I guess that the extra overhead here as compared to the
the C version would be line 4, 5, 9 and 10-15. What's 10-15 all about?
I guess that most of these additional operation would not affect the
performance of more complicated loops as they will only occur once per
loop (although combining the guard on line 9 with line 3 might be a
possible optimization)? Line 4 will appear once for each array used in
the loop and line 5 once for every array access, right?

Can the array implementation be designed in someway that would not
generate line 5 above? Or would it be possible to get rid of it by
some optimization?

-- 
Håkan Ardö
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