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Link Time Optimization (LTO) and Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) are LLVM compiler technologies supported by LDC, the LLVM D Compiler. Both LTO and PGO were tested using the TSV Utilities as a way to experiment with these tools. Performance benchmarks were done as part of this exploration. The benchmark study was done in fall 2017 and used the same tests as the March 2017 Comparative Benchmark Study. Material improvements were seen both in run-time performance and binary size. Both LTO and PGO are now used when building the prebuilt binaries available on the Github releases page.
This page contains the performance numbers from the study. For more information about LTO and PGO see the About Link Time Optimization and About Profile Guided Optimization sections of the Building with LTO and PGO page. The slide decks from presentations at Silicon Valley D Meetup (December 2017) and DConf 2018 also contain useful information about these studies.
The benchmarks were first run without LTO or PGO. Then LTO was applied to the TSV Utilities code, excluding the D standard libraries (druntime and phobos). Then it was applied to both the TSV Utilities code and the D standard libraries. Finally, PGO was added on top of LTO, against both the TSV Utilities code and D standard libraries.
Using LTO on only the TSV Utilities application code had very limited impact, but LTO on both the application and D standard library code resulted in significant gains on several benchmarks. PGO also resulted in material improvements on several benchmarks.
LTO also resulted in meaningful binary size deltas. These deltas were much more significant on MacOS than Linux, suggesting there are other considerations in the way LDC builds release mode binaries on MacOS.
MacOS
| LTO/PGO | tsv-summarize | csv2tsv | tsv-filter (numeric) |
tsv-filter (regex) |
tsv-select | tsv-join |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 21.79 | 25.43 | 4.98 | 7.71 | 4.23 | 21.33 |
| ThinLTO: App Only | 22.40 | 25.58 | 5.12 | 7.59 | 4.17 | 21.24 |
| ThinLTO: App+Libs | 10.41 | 21.41 | 3.71 | 7.04 | 4.05 | 20.11 |
| ThinLTO+PGO: App+Libs | 9.25 | 14.32 | 3.50 | 7.09 | 3.97 | not tested |
| Improvement | ||||||
| ThinLTO: App+Libs | 52% | 16% | 26% | 9% | 4% | 6% |
| ThinLTO+PGO: App+Libs | 58% | 44% | 30% | 8% | 6% | not tested |
Linux
| LTO/PGO | tsv-summarize | csv2tsv | tsv-filter (numeric) |
tsv-filter (regex) |
tsv-select | tsv-join |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 30.81 | 47.64 | 7.98 | 12.17 | 6.45 | not tested |
| FullLTO: App+Libs | 18.01 | 34.07 | 6.46 | 11.23 | 5.99 | |
| FullLTO+PGO: App+Libs | 16.90 | 31.31 | 6.17 | 11.15 | 5.93 | |
| Improvement | ||||||
| FullLTO: App+Libs | 42% | 28% | 19% | 8% | 7% | |
| FullLTO+PGO: App+Libs | 45% | 34% | 23% | 8% | 8% |
MacOS executable size (bytes)
| LTO | tsv-summarize | csv2tsv | tsv-filter | tsv-select | tsv-join |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 7,988,448 | 6,709,936 | 8,137,804 | 6,890,192 | 6,945,336 |
| ThinLTO: App Only | 6,949,712 | 6,643,344 | 6,639,844 | 6,676,000 | 6,688,392 |
| ThinLTO: App+Libs | 3,082,068 | 2,679,184 | 3,172,648 | 2,734,356 | 2,738,700 |
| Reduction | 61% | 60% | 61% | 60% | 61% |
Linux executable size (bytes)
| LTO | tsv-summarize | csv2tsv | tsv-filter | tsv-select | tsv-join |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | 1,400,672 | 995,760 | 1,743,288 | 1,026,344 | 1,049,176 |
| ThinLTO: App Only | 1,300,792 | 998,432 | 1,547,656 | 1,024,312 | 1,036,648 |
| ThinLTO: App+Libs | 1,154,808 | 826,064 | 1,359,554 | 856,064 | 868,736 |
| Reduction | 18% | 17% | 22% | 17% | 17% |