Flatbuffer FFI-bridge PoC

This repo implements a simple and dirty FFI bridge PoC using Flatbuffers. The PoC tests the feasibility of creating cross-platform libraries written in rust.

The Flatbuffer FFI-bridge main objectives are:

• Isolate the complexities of FFI bindings in a core library. Ultimately, the core library should be a simple set of functions that pass immutable memory pointers back and forth.
• Enable adding and consuming new library functions with simple and complex data structures without dealing with FFI data conversions, unsafe memory access, or thread safety concerns.
• Target mobile, web, and desktop apps and games

PoC evaluation points:

• Measure Flatbuffer encoding overhead
• Evaluate Flatbuffer code generation tools

Running the benchmarks

The project uses cmake to build and run the benchmarks. To setup the project just run make.

$ make

This command should download and build all the dependencies including the rust library.

Once the build is ready, run the benchmarks

# make bench
./build/Release/Linux/benchmarks/flatbuffers-test_bench --benchmark_out_format=json --benchmark_out=results.json
2023-02-26T00:54:00+00:00
Running ./build/Release/Linux/benchmarks/flatbuffers-test_bench
Run on (2 X 48 MHz CPU s)
Load Average: 0.39, 1.54, 1.34
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark                                          Time             CPU   Iterations UserCounters...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BM_GetTimestamp                                 20.9 ns         20.9 ns     33069187 items_per_second=47.949M/s
BM_PositionCreation                            0.312 ns        0.311 ns   1000000000 items_per_second=3.21298G/s
BM_CreatePlayerMovedEvent                       96.0 ns         96.0 ns      7205226 items_per_second=10.4172M/s
BM_SimpleCalculateDistance                      1.24 ns         1.24 ns    558033864 items_per_second=804.037M/s
BM_SimpleCalculateDistanceInRust                1.25 ns         1.25 ns    561018815 items_per_second=801.261M/s
BM_CalculateDistanceBuffer                      3.55 ns         3.45 ns    204070627 items_per_second=290.215M/s
BM_CalculateDistanceBufferInRust                59.2 ns         59.2 ns      9184137 items_per_second=16.8857M/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/1                       286 ns          286 ns      2447179 items_per_second=3.4949M/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/8                      1736 ns         1737 ns       401634 items_per_second=575.87k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/64                    12794 ns        12794 ns        54977 items_per_second=78.1641k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/512                  121105 ns       121091 ns         5756 items_per_second=8.25823k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/2048                 499912 ns       494418 ns         1439 items_per_second=2.02258k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation_BigO              127166.77 (1)   126065.17 (1)  
BM_PositionBatchCreation_RMS                     151 %           150 %    
BM_PositionBatchCreation/1/threads:4             138 ns          294 ns      2372476 items_per_second=3.39861M/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/8/threads:4             875 ns         1799 ns       383696 items_per_second=555.848k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/64/threads:4           6477 ns        13122 ns        49548 items_per_second=76.2075k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/512/threads:4         51403 ns       102012 ns         6872 items_per_second=9.80277k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreation/2048/threads:4       343531 ns       533964 ns         1352 items_per_second=1.87279k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder/1           244 ns          244 ns      2870268 items_per_second=4.10171M/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder/8          1633 ns         1633 ns       428934 items_per_second=612.313k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder/64        12077 ns        12075 ns        58755 items_per_second=82.8141k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder/512       93640 ns        93639 ns         7443 items_per_second=10.6793k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder/4096     747202 ns       747083 ns          919 items_per_second=1.33854k/s
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder_BigO  170959.48 (1)   170934.80 (1)  
BM_PositionBatchCreationReuseBuilder_RMS         170 %           170 %    
BM_CreateJsonMovedEventStr                       581 ns          581 ns      1187805 items_per_second=1.72135M/s
BM_CreateJsonMovedEventBinary                    504 ns          504 ns      1335818 items_per_second=1.98363M/s
cargo -C rust-fb/ bench
    Finished bench [optimized] target(s) in 0.89s
     Running unittests src/lib.rs (target/release/deps/rust_fb-e45cde6fe5d969df)

running 5 tests
test tests::distance ... ignored
test tests::movement_distance ... ignored
test tests::bench_create_movement_event       ... bench:         214 ns/iter (+/- 131)
test tests::bench_create_movement_event_reuse ... bench:          24 ns/iter (+/- 1)
test tests::bench_slice_from_raw              ... bench:          55 ns/iter (+/- 1)

test result: ok. 0 passed; 0 failed; 2 ignored; 3 measured; 0 filtered out; finished in 1.19s

VSCode Container

You can use the VSCode containers to run the project without installing the required tools. All the environment setup configuration is included in the .devcontainer folder.

Just execute CMD + P and Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

More info in Developing inside a Container