faster hashing #11203

narimiran · 2019-05-08T17:47:33Z

multibyte hashing for:
- string and string slices
- cstring
- string, ignoring case
- string, ignoring style
- openArray of byte or char

narimiran · 2019-05-08T17:55:43Z

lib/pure/hashes.nim

@@ -136,6 +139,17 @@ proc hash*[T: Ordinal](x: T): Hash {.inline.} =
  ## Efficient hashing of other ordinal types (e.g. enums).
  result = ord(x)

+template multibyteHashImpl(result: Hash, x: typed, start, stop: int) =


Here are some results on my machine (i7-970) for some basic tests I did. These are average times, but there is still variance so single-digit percent difference should be taken as zero.

test old algo (ms) new algo (ms) difference

10_000 English words 0.731 0.750 +2.6%

20_000 English words 1.517 1.563 +3.0%

50_000 English words 4.559 4.678 +2.6%

--- --- --- ---

20_000 random 4-char strings 0.497 0.503 +1.2%

20_000 random 8-char strings 0.775 1.077 +38.9% ??

20_000 random 9-char strings 0.867 0.614 -29.1%

20_000 random 12-char strings 0.952 0.687 -27.8%

20_000 random 16-char strings 1.162 0.592 -49.0%

20_000 random 24-char strings 1.504 0.600 -60.1%

20_000 random 32-char strings 1.860 0.656 -64.7%

20_000 random 64-char strings 3.274 0.851 -74.0%

As the length of string/array/seq increases, so does the performance of the new algorithm.

The only exception is length of 8, which is unexpectedly slow (the first while loop is called once, the second one is called zero times). Increasing the length to 9 (first loop once, second once) has a speed-up which would be expected for length of 8 too.

I've tried several different ways to write the first loop, but all had the similar results.

@mratsim do you maybe know what is going on here? Any tips?

Can you share your benchmarking script?

Can you share your benchmarking script?

It was just a quick/simple "hash a word, add a hash to set, do something with that set (don't time it) just in case", repeat that dozens of time, and report the average:

proc hashTesting(wordlist: seq[string], f: proc (x: string): Hash, name: string): float = let amount = 20_000 repetitions = 48 var collisions = newSeq[int](repetitions) highest = newSeq[int](repetitions) times = newSeq[float](repetitions) for i in 0 ..< repetitions: let words = wordList[amount*i ..< amount*i+amount] var s = initHashSet[int](sets.rightSize(amount)) var t = cpuTime() for w in words: s.incl f(w) t = cpuTime() - t times[i] = t collisions[i] = amount - s.len highest[i] = s.toSeq.max echo "--" echo name echo highest.min echo collisions.sum / collisions.len echo "max: ", times.max * 1000.0 echo "min: ", times.min * 1000.0 return times.sum / times.len.float * 1000.0

where f: proc (x: string): Hash is either the old one or the new one (or several others that I've tested).

The only exception is length of 8, which is unexpectedly slow

this is explained here: #11581 (and it's not just length 8)

* multibyte hashing for: * string and string slices * cstring * string, ignoring case * string, ignoring style * openArray of byte or char

mratsim

Beyond the perf that I will check, I found a couple issues in the current and new hashes:

The test suite is very empty (https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/blob/devel/tests/stdlib/thashes.nim), I'm pretty sure empty strings/sequences will crash.
The new hashing scheme does not work in the VM, so we wouldn't be able to use string based hashing at compile-time.

mratsim · 2019-05-09T08:19:03Z

lib/pure/hashes.nim

+template multibyteHashImpl(result: Hash, x: typed, start, stop: int) =
+  var i = start
+  while i <= stop+1 - IntSize:
+    let n = cast[ptr int](unsafeAddr x[i])[]


Can we have a fallback for hashing strings in the VM and a test.

Also while i < stop - IntSize: is cleaner

Also while i < stop - IntSize: is cleaner

You almost had me there ;)

Your version is true only when stop >= 9 or higher (length of 10), mine is when stop >= 7 (length of 8).

Argh off-by-one :/

mratsim · 2019-05-09T08:25:00Z

lib/pure/hashes.nim

+    lowerString = newStringOfCap(len(x))
+    i = 0
+  while i <= high(x):
+    lowerString.addLowercaseChar(x[i])


I think this crashes if x = ""

while i < x.len: wouldn't crash

A test case for empty strings would be nice.

no, high for empty strings produces -1, not 0.

mratsim · 2019-05-09T08:26:55Z

lib/pure/hashes.nim

+    lowerString = newStringOfCap(remainingLength)
+    i = sPos
+  while i <= ePos:
+    lowerString.addLowercaseChar(sBuf[i])


If string is empty and we pass sPos = ePos = 0, this probably crash.
Test case as well.

(Original code probably suffer from the same issue).

mratsim · 2019-05-09T08:29:50Z

lib/pure/hashes.nim

@@ -282,8 +280,12 @@ proc hash*[T: tuple](x: T): Hash =

 proc hash*[A](x: openArray[A]): Hash =
  ## Efficient hashing of arrays and sequences.
-  for it in items(x): result = result !& hash(it)
-  result = !$result
+  when A is char|byte:


Do we add uint8 as well?

Do we add other integers? And floats?

uint8 is an alias for byte.

mratsim

Since high("") returns -1, this shouldn't crash, I'd like some empty string tests though to avoid unlucky refactors.

I'll check the perf later today.

mratsim

.

Addressed

mratsim · 2019-05-10T09:24:51Z

I can't reproduce your outlier on my machine, for 20000 8-char random string the new implementation is about 25% faster, script here: https://gist.github.com/mratsim/e5a2d1d74adc2763ab7b080a7c40ef1e.

So for me we only need a fallback path for the VM.

narimiran · 2019-05-10T12:32:27Z

I can't reproduce your outlier on my machine, for 20000 8-char random string the new implementation is about 25% faster

Thanks for testing it! And now with your version of the script I also get the speed improvements for the length of 8.

So for me we only need a fallback path for the VM.

What do you recommend? How would that fallback look like? Use the old version for VM?

mratsim · 2019-05-10T13:50:42Z

when nimvm: old version sounds good. Probably with a warning that hashes at compile-time differs from hashes at runtime (it's already true for ref objects anyway).

* use optimized version for all ints * add more tests * make it work in VM * put warnings about differences between CT and runtime * minor style tweaks

narimiran · 2019-05-15T08:06:33Z

~~There is a showstopper breakage: now that VM hashes are different from runtime hashes, you cannot read from a const Table anymore :(~~
EDIT: Fixed in the next commit.

Btw, here are some more benchmark results, now that I made a version that works on all integers. This is hashing of 100_000 containers with X elements in each.

int8

elements	old algo	new algo	old/new
3	3.01	2.99	1.00x
4	3.07	3.19	0.94x
7	3.85	3.89	0.77x
8	4.05	2.56	1.56x
12	4.88	3.70	1.08x
16	5.98	3.07	1.62x
31	9.63	4.95	1.81x
32	9.64	3.60	2.50x
63	17.36	6.44	2.65x
64	17.32	5.33	3.20x

int16

elements	old algo	new algo	old/new
3	2.76	3.11	0.64x
4	3.02	2.61	1.14x
7	3.76	3.29	0.91x
8	3.87	2.83	1.06x
12	4.90	3.28	1.21x
16	6.01	3.59	1.67x
31	9.66	5.43	1.65x
32	9.89	5.11	1.76x
63	17.57	8.42	2.02x
64	17.77	8.02	2.12x

int32

elements	old algo	new algo	old/new
3	2.91	3.15	0.63x
4	3.29	2.98	1.00x
7	4.26	3.61	1.10x
8	4.34	3.63	1.10x
12	5.40	4.57	1.09x
16	7.16	5.24	1.33x
31	11.07	8.11	1.35x
32	11.15	8.15	1.35x
63	19.41	13.5	1.40x
64	19.51	13.5	1.40x

lib/pure/hashes.nim

juancarlospaco · 2019-05-19T12:37:05Z

Have you seen Meow ❔
https://mollyrocket.com/meowhash
Theres implementation on C.

narimiran commented May 8, 2019

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faster hashing

6875294

* multibyte hashing for: * string and string slices * cstring * string, ignoring case * string, ignoring style * openArray of byte or char

narimiran force-pushed the faster-hashes-redux branch from 297c95e to 6875294 Compare May 9, 2019 05:08

mratsim self-assigned this May 9, 2019

mratsim previously requested changes May 9, 2019

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mratsim reviewed May 9, 2019

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mratsim self-requested a review May 9, 2019 14:26

mratsim reviewed May 9, 2019

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mratsim self-requested a review May 9, 2019 14:28

narimiran force-pushed the faster-hashes-redux branch from 0d07f07 to fb58f44 Compare May 11, 2019 18:23

address the review comments

8c4ecc1

* use optimized version for all ints * add more tests * make it work in VM * put warnings about differences between CT and runtime * minor style tweaks

narimiran force-pushed the faster-hashes-redux branch 4 times, most recently from db04f15 to d886d35 Compare May 12, 2019 08:40

try to make it bootstrap

28b9097

narimiran force-pushed the faster-hashes-redux branch from d886d35 to 28b9097 Compare May 12, 2019 08:44

narimiran added 3 commits May 13, 2019 17:38

make it possible to bootstrap

1420a92

make it work in VM

8de71b9

another day, another attempt

c457704

produce the same hashes in VM and at runtime

4ca7bcd

Araq reviewed May 15, 2019

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narimiran force-pushed the faster-hashes-redux branch from d6ce277 to 4ca7bcd Compare May 16, 2019 05:15

use old versions for hashIgnore(Case|Style)

be2f3c6

remove now unneeded change to idents.nim

16a301e

Araq merged commit 1251e1a into nim-lang:devel May 21, 2019

narimiran deleted the faster-hashes-redux branch June 21, 2019 11:49

timotheecour mentioned this pull request Jun 25, 2019

regression: hashes makes tables 100x slower on some inputs, eg oids #11581

Closed

timotheecour mentioned this pull request Jul 17, 2019

[superseded] Different Hashing to avoid Collisions. #11767

Closed

mratsim mentioned this pull request Aug 24, 2019

hashes: implement murmur3 #12022

Merged

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faster hashing #11203

faster hashing #11203

narimiran commented May 8, 2019

narimiran May 8, 2019

mratsim May 9, 2019

narimiran May 9, 2019

timotheecour Jun 25, 2019 •

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narimiran commented May 10, 2019

mratsim commented May 10, 2019 •

edited

narimiran commented May 15, 2019 •

edited

juancarlospaco commented May 19, 2019

test	old algo (ms)	new algo (ms)	difference
10_000 English words	0.731	0.750	+2.6%
20_000 English words	1.517	1.563	+3.0%
50_000 English words	4.559	4.678	+2.6%
---	---	---	---
20_000 random 4-char strings	0.497	0.503	+1.2%
20_000 random 8-char strings	0.775	1.077	+38.9% ??
20_000 random 9-char strings	0.867	0.614	-29.1%
20_000 random 12-char strings	0.952	0.687	-27.8%
20_000 random 16-char strings	1.162	0.592	-49.0%
20_000 random 24-char strings	1.504	0.600	-60.1%
20_000 random 32-char strings	1.860	0.656	-64.7%
20_000 random 64-char strings	3.274	0.851	-74.0%

faster hashing #11203

faster hashing #11203

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narimiran commented May 8, 2019

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mratsim commented May 10, 2019

narimiran commented May 10, 2019

mratsim commented May 10, 2019 • edited

narimiran commented May 15, 2019 • edited

int8

int16

int32

juancarlospaco commented May 19, 2019

timotheecour Jun 25, 2019 •

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