Commit Graph

3 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Alex Crichton
f4b9020913 Change wasm-to-host trampolines to take the values_vec size (#4192)
* Change wasm-to-host trampolines to take the values_vec size

This commit changes the ABI of wasm-to-host trampolines, which are
only used right now for functions created with `Func::new`, to pass
along the size of the `values_vec` argument. Previously the trampoline
simply received `*mut ValRaw` and assumed that it was the appropriate
size. By receiving a size as well we can thread through `&mut [ValRaw]`
internally instead of `*mut ValRaw`.

The original motivation for this is that I'm planning to leverage these
trampolines for the component model for host-defined functions. Out of
an abundance of caution of making sure that everything lines up I wanted
to be able to write down asserts about the size received at runtime
compared to the size expected. This overall led me to the desire to
thread this size parameter through on the assumption that it would not
impact performance all that much.

I ran two benchmarks locally from the `call.rs` benchmark and got:

* `sync/no-hook/wasm-to-host - nop - unchecked` - no change
* `sync/no-hook/wasm-to-host - nop-params-and-results - unchecked` - 5%
  slower

This is what I roughly expected in that if nothing actually reads the
new parameter (e.g. no arguments) then threading through the parameter
is effectively otherwise free. Otherwise though accesses to the `ValRaw`
storage is now bounds-checked internally in Wasmtime instead of assuming
it's valid, leading to the 5% slowdown (~9.6ns to ~10.3ns). If this
becomes a peformance bottleneck for a particular use case then we should
be fine to remove the bounds checking here or otherwise only bounds
check in debug mode, otherwise I plan on leaving this as-is.

Of particular note this also changes the C API for `*_unchecked`
functions where the C callback now receives the size of the array as
well.

* Add docs
2022-06-01 09:05:37 -05:00
Alex Crichton
bfdbd10a13 Add *_unchecked variants of Func APIs for the C API (#3350)
* Add `*_unchecked` variants of `Func` APIs for the C API

This commit is what is hopefully going to be my last installment within
the saga of optimizing function calls in/out of WebAssembly modules in
the C API. This is yet another alternative approach to #3345 (sorry) but
also contains everything necessary to make the C API fast. As in #3345
the general idea is just moving checks out of the call path in the same
style of `TypedFunc`.

This new strategy takes inspiration from previously learned attempts
effectively "just" exposes how we previously passed `*mut u128` through
trampolines for arguments/results. This storage format is formalized
through a new `ValRaw` union that is exposed from the `wasmtime` crate.
By doing this it made it relatively easy to expose two new APIs:

* `Func::new_unchecked`
* `Func::call_unchecked`

These are the same as their checked equivalents except that they're
`unsafe` and they work with `*mut ValRaw` rather than safe slices of
`Val`. Working with these eschews type checks and such and requires
callers/embedders to do the right thing.

These two new functions are then exposed via the C API with new
functions, enabling C to have a fast-path of calling/defining functions.
This fast path is akin to `Func::wrap` in Rust, although that API can't
be built in C due to C not having generics in the same way that Rust
has.

For some benchmarks, the benchmarks here are:

* `nop` - Call a wasm function from the host that does nothing and
  returns nothing.
* `i64` - Call a wasm function from the host, the wasm function calls a
  host function, and the host function returns an `i64` all the way out to
  the original caller.
* `many` - Call a wasm function from the host, the wasm calls
   host function with 5 `i32` parameters, and then an `i64` result is
   returned back to the original host
* `i64` host - just the overhead of the wasm calling the host, so the
  wasm calls the host function in a loop.
* `many` host - same as `i64` host, but calling the `many` host function.

All numbers in this table are in nanoseconds, and this is just one
measurement as well so there's bound to be some variation in the precise
numbers here.

| Name      | Rust | C (before) | C (after) |
|-----------|------|------------|-----------|
| nop       | 19   | 112        | 25        |
| i64       | 22   | 207        | 32        |
| many      | 27   | 189        | 34        |
| i64 host  | 2    | 38         | 5         |
| many host | 7    | 75         | 8         |

The main conclusion here is that the C API is significantly faster than
before when using the `*_unchecked` variants of APIs. The Rust
implementation is still the ceiling (or floor I guess?) for performance
The main reason that C is slower than Rust is that a little bit more has
to travel through memory where on the Rust side of things we can
monomorphize and inline a bit more to get rid of that. Overall though
the costs are way way down from where they were originally and I don't
plan on doing a whole lot more myself at this time. There's various
things we theoretically could do I've considered but implementation-wise
I think they'll be much more weighty.

* Tweak `wasmtime_externref_t` API comments
2021-09-24 14:05:45 -05:00
Alex Crichton
7a1b7cdf92 Implement RFC 11: Redesigning Wasmtime's APIs (#2897)
Implement Wasmtime's new API as designed by RFC 11. This is quite a large commit which has had lots of discussion externally, so for more information it's best to read the RFC thread and the PR thread.
2021-06-03 09:10:53 -05:00