Async Bench

A shallow comparison of Python vs Elixir vs Node for asynchronous code.

Results

Some initial results running it with 1k, 10k and 100k async calls:

Elixir

Node

Python

Code

Code used simply call an asynchronous function that sleeps for 1 second 10k times and measure the time taken.

There is some code for measuring time in each snippet but their core can be reduced to:

Python

import asyncio

async def wait_n(n):
    await asyncio.sleep(n)

tasks = [wait_n(1) for i in range(10_000)]

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
loop.run_until_complete(asyncio.wait(tasks))

Elixir

1..10_000
|> Enum.map(fn _ -> Task.async(fn -> :timer.sleep(1_000) end) end)
|> Enum.map(fn t -> Task.await(t, 10_000) end)

Node

async function wait(delay) {
  await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, delay * 1000))
}

async function runN(n) {
  await Promise.all(Array(n).fill(1).map(() => wait(1)))
}

runN(10000)

Usage

In order to run the test code simply run make.

Sample usage:

async_bench$ make


*******************************************
|           System information            |
*******************************************
|                   |                     |
|      Memory       |         7,7Gi       |
|                   |                     |
|-------------------+---------------------|
|                   |                     |
|      Threads      |           8         |
|                   |                     |
*******************************************


Testing python ( Python 3.6.6 )
python3 source/async.py
Executed in: 1102ms


Testing elixir ( Elixir 1.6.6 (compiled with OTP 19) )
elixir source/async.exs
Executed in 1064ms


Testing node ( v10.2.1 )
node source/async.js
Executed in 1019ms

Running one specific test is also possible with by passing it to make:

async_bench$ make elixir
Testing elixir ( Elixir 1.6.6 (compiled with OTP 19) )
elixir source/async.exs
Executed in 1106ms

With data/all.dat properly populated one may regenerate the graphs with make plot (requires gnuplot):

async_bench$ ls plots
async_bench$ make plot
async_bench$ ls plots
all.svg  elixir.svg  node.svg  python.svg