llvm-project VS rust

The background here is that "ctpop < 2" or "ctpop == 1" (depending on zero behavior) is LLVM's canonical representation for a "power of two" check. It is used on the premise that the backend will expand it back into a cheap bitwise check and not use an actual ctpop operation. However, due to complex interactions in the backend, this does not actually happen in this case (https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/94829).

The checked project version is LLVM 18.1.0.

I think they should probably set LoopMicroOpBufferSize to a non-zero value even if its not microarchitecturally accurate. This value is used in LLVM to control whether partial and runtime loop unrolling are enabled (actually only for that). Although some targets override this default behaviour, AArch64 only overrides it to enable partial and runtime unrolling for in-order models. I've left a review comment https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/pull/91022/files#r16026... and as I note there, the setting seems to have become very divorced from microarchitectural reality if you look at how and why different scheduling models set it in-tree (e.g. all the Neoverse cores, set it to 16 with a comment they just copied it from the A57).

In conclusion, none of the proposed changes to the Ruby version of the code makes a dent in the Crystal version. This is not entirely Crystal's doing: it uses the LLVM backend, which generates very optimized binaries.

As far as I know, libstdc++'s representation has two advantages:

First, it simplifies the implementation of `s.data()`, because you hold a pointer that invariably points to the first character of the data. The pointer-less version needs to do a branch there. Compare libstdc++ [1] to libc++ [2].

[1]: https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/blob/065dddc/libstdc++-v3/...

[2]: https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/1a96179/libcxx/inc...

Basically libstdc++ is paying an extra 8 bytes of storage, and losing trivial relocatability, in exchange for one fewer branch every time you access the string's characters. I imagine that the performance impact of that extra branch is tiny, and massively confounded in practice by unrelated factors that are clearly on libc++'s side (e.g. libc++'s SSO buffer is 7 bytes bigger, despite libc++'s string object itself being smaller). But it's there.

The second advantage is that libstdc++ already did it that way, and to change it would be an ABI break; so now they're stuck with it. I mean, obviously that's not an "advantage" in the intuitive sense; but it's functionally equivalent to an advantage, in that it's a very strong technical answer to the question "Why doesn't libstdc++ just switch to doing it libc++'s way?"

This Ruby implementation is based on mruby and LLVM and it’s commercial software but cheap.

'Computer Architeture: A Quantitative Apporach" and/or more specific design types (mips, arm, etc) can be found under the Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architeture and Design.

"Getting Started with LLVM Core Libraries: Get to Grips With Llvm Essentials and Use the Core Libraries to Build Advanced Tools "

"The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 1) : LLVM" https://aosabook.org/en/v1/llvm.html

"Tourist Guide to LLVM source code" : https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1453

llvm home page : https://llvm.org/

llvm tutorial : https://llvm.org/docs/tutorial/

llvm reference : https://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html

learn by examples : C source code to 'llvm' bitcode : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9148890/how-to-make-clan...

See

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/88344

https://fortran-lang.discourse.group/t/flang-new-how-to-forc...

Rust

It seems to be more fussy about compiler optimizations, though: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/125543

apimock-rs is one of my projects on API mock Server generating HTTP/JSON responses to help to develop microservices and APIs, written in Rust.

Rust, the language itself depends on 220 packages: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/e8753914580fb42554a79...

If you trust nobody, it is hard to use anything.

But about your second note, (environment, mismatched dependencies), I would argue that Rust provides the best tooling to solve or identify issues on that area.

rustc source code

First look is into The Unstable Book. Well, it does not look informative but gives us some background from the rust-lang Github project-const-generics. It says:

Rust has been around for several years and works well as a system and general programming language. There are many fine introductions to the language, a good place to start is here: https://www.rust-lang.org/

‍For the rest of this post I’ll list off some more tactical examples of things that you can do towards this goal. Savvy readers will note that these are not novel ideas of my own, and in fact a lot of the things on this list are popular core features in modern languages such as Kotlin, Rust, and Clojure. Kotlin, in particular, has done an amazing job of emphasizing these best practices while still being an extremely practical and approachable language.

> There are online Rust compilers and interpreters already if you just want to rapid prototype and develop ideas in Rust

You are responding to one of the key developers of Rust early on[1], who's been working with the language for 14 years at that point.

[1] https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/graphs/contributors?from=2... and he's still #16 in commits overall today, despite almost no activity on the rust compiler since 2014.

If you haven't dipped your touch-typing fingers into Rust yet, you really owe it to yourself. Rust is a modern programming language with features that make it suitable not only for systems programming -- its original purpose, but just about any other environment, too; there are frameworks that let your build web services, web applications including user interfaces, software for embedded devices, machine learning solutions, and of course, command-line tools. Since a custom GitHub Action is essentially a command-line tool that interacts with the system through files and environment variables, Rust is perfectly suited for that as well.