Disclaimer: Benchmarking is hard. Please let me know where I fucked this one up.
This repository contains a benchmark for node's http parser (just the parser, no networking), for the popular "hello world" vanity benchmark.
The http request is in fixtures/get.http and contains 611 bytes, 1 status line and 8 headers.
In order to have a "control group", I have implemented a fast, but very
incomplete, parser in lib/js_http_parser.js. However, it is able to parse the
headers of the fixture correctly, so it can serve as an interesting data point.
node-http.js:
benchmark number duration time rss heapUsed heapTotal nodeVersion v8Version bytes headers iterations
node-http 1 713 1360061050451 18325504 4044696 9227008 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 2 732 1360061051192 21856256 4934712 12356096 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 3 728 1360061051920 22994944 4927376 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 4 731 1360061052651 22994944 8064136 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 5 735 1360061053386 22994944 5965768 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 6 736 1360061054122 23003136 5933848 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 7 730 1360061054853 23003136 3836088 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 8 726 1360061055579 23003136 9010648 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 9 730 1360061056309 23003136 6912552 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 10 731 1360061057040 23027712 4814544 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 11 726 1360061057766 23031808 4780416 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 12 725 1360061058491 23031808 2678552 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 13 725 1360061059216 23031808 7857144 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 14 725 1360061059941 23031808 5759200 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 15 725 1360061060666 23031808 5724656 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 16 727 1360061061393 23031808 3625328 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 17 726 1360061062119 23031808 6737472 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 18 727 1360061062846 23031808 6704824 13388032 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 19 725 1360061063574 21999616 7406248 12356096 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
node-http 20 726 1360061064302 21999616 7406680 12356096 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http.js:
benchmark number duration time rss heapUsed heapTotal nodeVersion v8Version bytes headers iterations
js-http 1 716 1360061014968 14540800 2331776 6131200 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 2 702 1360061015679 17637376 3274176 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 3 709 1360061016388 17653760 3294120 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 4 711 1360061017099 17653760 3295920 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 5 704 1360061017803 17666048 3297992 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 6 704 1360061018507 17666048 3300816 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 7 704 1360061019211 17666048 3302840 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 8 700 1360061019911 17678336 3304864 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 9 704 1360061020615 17682432 3306896 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 10 701 1360061021319 17756160 4554304 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 11 701 1360061022023 17690624 4521176 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 12 703 1360061022726 17690624 4525768 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 13 702 1360061023428 17694720 4524952 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 14 705 1360061024135 17694720 4487616 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 15 703 1360061024838 17694720 4492208 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 16 706 1360061025544 17694720 4492224 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 17 707 1360061026253 17694720 4488912 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 18 706 1360061026959 17694720 4493800 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 19 704 1360061027663 17694720 4492712 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
js-http 20 701 1360061028366 17694720 4489192 8228352 0.8.18 3.11.10.25 611 16 100000
So why is the js parser faster? It's hard to say, but my guess is:
- Since it's incomplete
- Because this benchmark shows the cost of calling C/C++ code from JS and vise versa in v8.
Other observations:
- I saw an overall performance decrease when upgrading from node v0.8.11 to v0.8.18.
- heapUsed is very jumpy for node-http, probably indicating a lot more GC work going on.
- node-http also uses more memory overall (~13mb heap total vs. 8mb in js-http)
- node-http is doing more work than js-http, as well as returning a larger data structure with more properties.