content/profiling-go-programs.article

Profiling Go Programs
24 Jun 2011
Tags: benchmark, pprof, profiling, technical

Russ Cox, July 2011; updated by Shenghou Ma, May 2013

* Introduction

At Scala Days 2011, Robert Hundt presented a paper titled
[[http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37122.html][Loop Recognition in C++/Java/Go/Scala.]]
The paper implemented a specific loop finding algorithm, such as you might use
in a flow analysis pass of a compiler, in C++, Go, Java, Scala, and then used
those programs to draw conclusions about typical performance concerns in these
languages.
The Go program presented in that paper runs quite slowly, making it
an excellent opportunity to demonstrate how to use Go's profiling tools to take
a slow program and make it faster.

_By_using_Go's_profiling_tools_to_identify_and_correct_specific_bottlenecks,_we_can_make_the_Go_loop_finding_program_run_an_order_of_magnitude_faster_and_use_6x_less_memory._
(Update: Due to recent optimizations of `libstdc++` in `gcc`, the memory reduction is now 3.7x.)

Hundt's paper does not specify which versions of the C++, Go, Java, and Scala
tools he used.
In this blog post, we will be using the most recent weekly snapshot of the `6g`
Go compiler and the version of `g++` that ships with the Ubuntu Natty
distribution.
(We will not be using Java or Scala, because we are not skilled at writing efficient
programs in either of those languages, so the comparison would be unfair.
Since C++ was the fastest language in the paper, the comparisons here with C++ should
suffice.)
(Update: In this updated post, we will be using the most recent development snapshot
of the Go compiler on amd64 and the most recent version of `g++` -- 4.8.0, which was
released in March 2013.)

	$ go version
	go version devel +08d20469cc20 Tue Mar 26 08:27:18 2013 +0100 linux/amd64
	$ g++ --version
	g++ (GCC) 4.8.0
	Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
	...
	$

The programs are run on a computer with a 3.4GHz Core i7-2600 CPU and 16 GB of
RAM running Gentoo Linux's 3.8.4-gentoo kernel.
The machine is running with CPU frequency scaling disabled via

	$ sudo bash
	# for i in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu[0-7]
	do
	    echo performance > $i/cpufreq/scaling_governor
	done
	#

We've taken [[https://github.com/hundt98847/multi-language-bench][Hundt's benchmark programs]]
in C++ and Go, combined each into a single source file, and removed all but one
line of output.
We'll time the program using Linux's `time` utility with a format that shows user time,
system time, real time, and maximum memory usage:

	$ cat xtime
	#!/bin/sh
	/usr/bin/time -f '%Uu %Ss %er %MkB %C' "$@"
	$

	$ make havlak1cc
	g++ -O3 -o havlak1cc havlak1.cc
	$ ./xtime ./havlak1cc
	# of loops: 76002 (total 3800100)
	loop-0, nest: 0, depth: 0
	17.70u 0.05s 17.80r 715472kB ./havlak1cc
	$

	$ make havlak1
	go build havlak1.go
	$ ./xtime ./havlak1
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	25.05u 0.11s 25.20r 1334032kB ./havlak1
	$

The C++ program runs in 17.80 seconds and uses 700 MB of memory.
The Go program runs in 25.20 seconds and uses 1302 MB of memory.
(These measurements are difficult to reconcile with the ones in the paper, but the
point of this post is to explore how to use `go tool pprof`, not to reproduce the
results from the paper.)

To start tuning the Go program, we have to enable profiling.
If the code used the [[https://golang.org/pkg/testing/][Go testing package]]'s
benchmarking support, we could use gotest's standard `-cpuprofile` and `-memprofile`
flags.
In a standalone program like this one, we have to import `runtime/pprof` and add a few
lines of code:

	var cpuprofile = flag.String("cpuprofile", "", "write cpu profile to file")

	func main() {
	    flag.Parse()
	    if *cpuprofile != "" {
	        f, err := os.Create(*cpuprofile)
	        if err != nil {
	            log.Fatal(err)
	        }
	        pprof.StartCPUProfile(f)
	        defer pprof.StopCPUProfile()
	    }
	    ...

The new code defines a flag named `cpuprofile`, calls the
[[https://golang.org/pkg/flag/][Go flag library]] to parse the command line flags,
and then, if the `cpuprofile` flag has been set on the command line,
[[https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/pprof/#StartCPUProfile][starts CPU profiling]]
redirected to that file.
The profiler requires a final call to
[[https://golang.org/pkg/runtime/pprof/#StopCPUProfile][`StopCPUProfile`]] to
flush any pending writes to the file before the program exits; we use `defer`
to make sure this happens as `main` returns.

After adding that code, we can run the program with the new `-cpuprofile` flag
and then run `go tool pprof` to interpret the profile.

	$ make havlak1.prof
	./havlak1 -cpuprofile=havlak1.prof
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	$ go tool pprof havlak1 havlak1.prof
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof)

The `go tool pprof` program is a slight variant of
[[https://github.com/gperftools/gperftools][Google's `pprof` C++ profiler]].
The most important command is `topN`, which shows the top `N` samples in the profile:

	(pprof) top10
	Total: 2525 samples
	     298  11.8%  11.8%      345  13.7% runtime.mapaccess1_fast64
	     268  10.6%  22.4%     2124  84.1% main.FindLoops
	     251   9.9%  32.4%      451  17.9% scanblock
	     178   7.0%  39.4%      351  13.9% hash_insert
	     131   5.2%  44.6%      158   6.3% sweepspan
	     119   4.7%  49.3%      350  13.9% main.DFS
	      96   3.8%  53.1%       98   3.9% flushptrbuf
	      95   3.8%  56.9%       95   3.8% runtime.aeshash64
	      95   3.8%  60.6%      101   4.0% runtime.settype_flush
	      88   3.5%  64.1%      988  39.1% runtime.mallocgc

When CPU profiling is enabled, the Go program stops about 100 times per second
and records a sample consisting of the program counters on the currently executing
goroutine's stack.
The profile has 2525 samples, so it was running for a bit over 25 seconds.
In the `go tool pprof` output, there is a row for each function that appeared in
a sample.
The first two columns show the number of samples in which the function was running
(as opposed to waiting for a called function to return), as a raw count and as a
percentage of total samples.
The `runtime.mapaccess1_fast64` function was running during 298 samples, or 11.8%.
The `top10` output is sorted by this sample count.
The third column shows the running total during the listing:
the first three rows account for 32.4% of the samples.
The fourth and fifth columns show the number of samples in which the function appeared
(either running or waiting for a called function to return).
The `main.FindLoops` function was running in 10.6% of the samples, but it was on the
call stack (it or functions it called were running) in 84.1% of the samples.

To sort by the fourth and fifth columns, use the `-cum` (for cumulative) flag:

	(pprof) top5 -cum
	Total: 2525 samples
	       0   0.0%   0.0%     2144  84.9% gosched0
	       0   0.0%   0.0%     2144  84.9% main.main
	       0   0.0%   0.0%     2144  84.9% runtime.main
	       0   0.0%   0.0%     2124  84.1% main.FindHavlakLoops
	     268  10.6%  10.6%     2124  84.1% main.FindLoops
	(pprof) top5 -cum

In fact the total for `main.FindLoops` and `main.main` should have been 100%, but
each stack sample only includes the bottom 100 stack frames; during about a quarter
of the samples, the recursive `main.DFS` function was more than 100 frames deeper
than `main.main` so the complete trace was truncated.

The stack trace samples contain more interesting data about function call relationships
than the text listings can show.
The `web` command writes a graph of the profile data in SVG format and opens it in a web
browser.
(There is also a `gv` command that writes PostScript and opens it in Ghostview.
For either command, you need [[http://www.graphviz.org/][graphviz]] installed.)

	(pprof) web

A small fragment of
[[https://rawgit.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/master/havlak/havlak1.svg][the full graph]] looks like:

.image profiling-go-programs_havlak1a-75.png

Each box in the graph corresponds to a single function, and the boxes are sized
according to the number of samples in which the function was running.
An edge from box X to box Y indicates that X calls Y; the number along the edge is
the number of times that call appears in a sample.
If a call appears multiple times in a single sample, such as during recursive function
calls, each appearance counts toward the edge weight.
That explains the 21342 on the self-edge from `main.DFS` to itself.

Just at a glance, we can see that the program spends much of its time in hash
operations, which correspond to use of Go's `map` values.
We can tell `web` to use only samples that include a specific function, such as
`runtime.mapaccess1_fast64`, which clears some of the noise from the graph:

	(pprof) web mapaccess1

.image profiling-go-programs_havlak1-hash_lookup-75.png

If we squint, we can see that the calls to `runtime.mapaccess1_fast64` are being
made by `main.FindLoops` and `main.DFS`.

Now that we have a rough idea of the big picture, it's time to zoom in on a particular
function.
Let's look at `main.DFS` first, just because it is a shorter function:

	(pprof) list DFS
	Total: 2525 samples
	ROUTINE ====================== main.DFS in /home/rsc/g/benchgraffiti/havlak/havlak1.go
	   119    697 Total samples (flat / cumulative)
	     3      3  240: func DFS(currentNode *BasicBlock, nodes []*UnionFindNode, number map[*BasicBlock]int, last []int, current int) int {
	     1      1  241:     nodes[current].Init(currentNode, current)
	     1     37  242:     number[currentNode] = current
	     .      .  243:
	     1      1  244:     lastid := current
	    89     89  245:     for _, target := range currentNode.OutEdges {
	     9    152  246:             if number[target] == unvisited {
	     7    354  247:                     lastid = DFS(target, nodes, number, last, lastid+1)
	     .      .  248:             }
	     .      .  249:     }
	     7     59  250:     last[number[currentNode]] = lastid
	     1      1  251:     return lastid
	(pprof)

The listing shows the source code for the `DFS` function (really, for every function
matching the regular expression `DFS`).
The first three columns are the number of samples taken while running that line, the
number of samples taken while running that line or in code called from that line, and
the line number in the file.
The related command `disasm` shows a disassembly of the function instead of a source
listing; when there are enough samples this can help you see which instructions are
expensive.
The `weblist` command mixes the two modes: it shows
[[https://rawgit.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/master/havlak/havlak1.html][a source listing in which clicking a line shows the disassembly]].

Since we already know that the time is going into map lookups implemented by the
hash runtime functions, we care most about the second column.
A large fraction of time is spent in recursive calls to `DFS` (line 247), as would be
expected from a recursive traversal.
Excluding the recursion, it looks like the time is going into the accesses to the
`number` map on lines 242, 246, and 250.
For that particular lookup, a map is not the most efficient choice.
Just as they would be in a compiler, the basic block structures have unique sequence
numbers assigned to them.
Instead of using a `map[*BasicBlock]int` we can use a `[]int`, a slice indexed by the
block number.
There's no reason to use a map when an array or slice will do.

Changing `number` from a map to a slice requires editing seven lines in the program
and cut its run time by nearly a factor of two:

	$ make havlak2
	go build havlak2.go
	$ ./xtime ./havlak2
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	16.55u 0.11s 16.69r 1321008kB ./havlak2
	$ 

(See the [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/commit/58ac27bcac3ffb553c29d0b3fb64745c91c95948][diff between `havlak1` and `havlak2`]])

We can run the profiler again to confirm that `main.DFS` is no longer a significant
part of the run time:

	$ make havlak2.prof
	./havlak2 -cpuprofile=havlak2.prof
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	$ go tool pprof havlak2 havlak2.prof
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof)
	(pprof) top5
	Total: 1652 samples
	     197  11.9%  11.9%      382  23.1% scanblock
	     189  11.4%  23.4%     1549  93.8% main.FindLoops
	     130   7.9%  31.2%      152   9.2% sweepspan
	     104   6.3%  37.5%      896  54.2% runtime.mallocgc
	      98   5.9%  43.5%      100   6.1% flushptrbuf
	(pprof)

The entry `main.DFS` no longer appears in the profile, and the rest of the program
runtime has dropped too.
Now the program is spending most of its time allocating memory and garbage collecting
(`runtime.mallocgc`, which both allocates and runs periodic garbage collections,
accounts for 54.2% of the time).
To find out why the garbage collector is running so much, we have to find out what is
allocating memory.
One way is to add memory profiling to the program.
We'll arrange that if the `-memprofile` flag is supplied, the program stops after one
iteration of the loop finding, writes a memory profile, and exits:

	var memprofile = flag.String("memprofile", "", "write memory profile to this file")
	...

		FindHavlakLoops(cfgraph, lsgraph)
		if *memprofile != "" {
			f, err := os.Create(*memprofile)
			if err != nil {
			    log.Fatal(err)
			}
			pprof.WriteHeapProfile(f)
			f.Close()
			return
		}

We invoke the program with `-memprofile` flag to write a profile:

	$ make havlak3.mprof
	go build havlak3.go
	./havlak3 -memprofile=havlak3.mprof
	$ 
(See the [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/commit/b78dac106bea1eb3be6bb3ca5dba57c130268232][diff from havlak2]])

We use `go tool pprof` exactly the same way. Now the samples we are examining are
memory allocations, not clock ticks.

	$ go tool pprof havlak3 havlak3.mprof
	Adjusting heap profiles for 1-in-524288 sampling rate
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof) top5
	Total: 82.4 MB
	    56.3  68.4%  68.4%     56.3  68.4% main.FindLoops
	    17.6  21.3%  89.7%     17.6  21.3% main.(*CFG).CreateNode
	     8.0   9.7%  99.4%     25.6  31.0% main.NewBasicBlockEdge
	     0.5   0.6% 100.0%      0.5   0.6% itab
	     0.0   0.0% 100.0%      0.5   0.6% fmt.init
	(pprof)

The command `go tool pprof` reports that `FindLoops` has allocated approximately
56.3 of the 82.4 MB in use; `CreateNode` accounts for another 17.6 MB.
To reduce overhead, the memory profiler only records information for approximately
one block per half megabyte allocated (the “1-in-524288 sampling rate”), so these
are approximations to the actual counts.

To find the memory allocations, we can list those functions.

	(pprof) list FindLoops
	Total: 82.4 MB
	ROUTINE ====================== main.FindLoops in /home/rsc/g/benchgraffiti/havlak/havlak3.go
	  56.3   56.3 Total MB (flat / cumulative)
	...
	   1.9    1.9  268:     nonBackPreds := make([]map[int]bool, size)
	   5.8    5.8  269:     backPreds := make([][]int, size)
	     .      .  270:
	   1.9    1.9  271:     number := make([]int, size)
	   1.9    1.9  272:     header := make([]int, size, size)
	   1.9    1.9  273:     types := make([]int, size, size)
	   1.9    1.9  274:     last := make([]int, size, size)
	   1.9    1.9  275:     nodes := make([]*UnionFindNode, size, size)
	     .      .  276:
	     .      .  277:     for i := 0; i < size; i++ {
	   9.5    9.5  278:             nodes[i] = new(UnionFindNode)
	     .      .  279:     }
	...
	     .      .  286:     for i, bb := range cfgraph.Blocks {
	     .      .  287:             number[bb.Name] = unvisited
	  29.5   29.5  288:             nonBackPreds[i] = make(map[int]bool)
	     .      .  289:     }
	...

It looks like the current bottleneck is the same as the last one: using maps where
simpler data structures suffice.
`FindLoops` is allocating about 29.5 MB of maps.

As an aside, if we run `go tool pprof` with the `--inuse_objects` flag, it will
report allocation counts instead of sizes:


	$ go tool pprof --inuse_objects havlak3 havlak3.mprof
	Adjusting heap profiles for 1-in-524288 sampling rate
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof) list FindLoops
	Total: 1763108 objects
	ROUTINE ====================== main.FindLoops in /home/rsc/g/benchgraffiti/havlak/havlak3.go
	720903 720903 Total objects (flat / cumulative)
	...
	     .      .  277:     for i := 0; i < size; i++ {
	311296 311296  278:             nodes[i] = new(UnionFindNode)
	     .      .  279:     }
	     .      .  280:
	     .      .  281:     // Step a:
	     .      .  282:     //   - initialize all nodes as unvisited.
	     .      .  283:     //   - depth-first traversal and numbering.
	     .      .  284:     //   - unreached BB's are marked as dead.
	     .      .  285:     //
	     .      .  286:     for i, bb := range cfgraph.Blocks {
	     .      .  287:             number[bb.Name] = unvisited
	409600 409600  288:             nonBackPreds[i] = make(map[int]bool)
	     .      .  289:     }
	...
	(pprof)

Since the ~200,000 maps account for 29.5 MB, it looks like the initial map allocation
takes about 150 bytes.
That's reasonable when a map is being used to hold key-value pairs, but not when a map
is being used as a stand-in for a simple set, as it is here.

Instead of using a map, we can use a simple slice to list the elements.
In all but one of the cases where maps are being used, it is impossible for the algorithm
to insert a duplicate element.
In the one remaining case, we can write a simple variant of the `append` built-in function:

	func appendUnique(a []int, x int) []int {
	    for _, y := range a {
	        if x == y {
	            return a
	        }
	    }
	    return append(a, x)
	}

In addition to writing that function, changing the Go program to use slices instead
of maps requires changing just a few lines of code.

	$ make havlak4
	go build havlak4.go
	$ ./xtime ./havlak4
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	11.84u 0.08s 11.94r 810416kB ./havlak4
	$ 
(See the [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/commit/245d899f7b1a33b0c8148a4cd147cb3de5228c8a][diff from havlak3]])

We're now at 2.11x faster than when we started. Let's look at a CPU profile again.

	$ make havlak4.prof
	./havlak4 -cpuprofile=havlak4.prof
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	$ go tool pprof havlak4 havlak4.prof
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof) top10
	Total: 1173 samples
	     205  17.5%  17.5%     1083  92.3% main.FindLoops
	     138  11.8%  29.2%      215  18.3% scanblock
	      88   7.5%  36.7%       96   8.2% sweepspan
	      76   6.5%  43.2%      597  50.9% runtime.mallocgc
	      75   6.4%  49.6%       78   6.6% runtime.settype_flush
	      74   6.3%  55.9%       75   6.4% flushptrbuf
	      64   5.5%  61.4%       64   5.5% runtime.memmove
	      63   5.4%  66.8%      524  44.7% runtime.growslice
	      51   4.3%  71.1%       51   4.3% main.DFS
	      50   4.3%  75.4%      146  12.4% runtime.MCache_Alloc
	(pprof)

Now memory allocation and the consequent garbage collection (`runtime.mallocgc`)
accounts for 50.9% of our run time.
Another way to look at why the system is garbage collecting is to look at the
allocations that are causing the collections, the ones that spend most of the time
in `mallocgc`:

	(pprof) web mallocgc

.image profiling-go-programs_havlak4a-mallocgc.png

It's hard to tell what's going on in that graph, because there are many nodes with
small sample numbers obscuring the big ones.
We can tell `go tool pprof` to ignore nodes that don't account for at least 10% of
the samples:

	$ go tool pprof --nodefraction=0.1 havlak4 havlak4.prof
	Welcome to pprof!  For help, type 'help'.
	(pprof) web mallocgc

.image profiling-go-programs_havlak4a-mallocgc-trim.png

We can follow the thick arrows easily now, to see that `FindLoops` is triggering
most of the garbage collection.
If we list `FindLoops` we can see that much of it is right at the beginning:

	(pprof) list FindLoops
	...
	     .      .  270: func FindLoops(cfgraph *CFG, lsgraph *LSG) {
	     .      .  271:     if cfgraph.Start == nil {
	     .      .  272:             return
	     .      .  273:     }
	     .      .  274:
	     .      .  275:     size := cfgraph.NumNodes()
	     .      .  276:
	     .    145  277:     nonBackPreds := make([][]int, size)
	     .      9  278:     backPreds := make([][]int, size)
	     .      .  279:
	     .      1  280:     number := make([]int, size)
	     .     17  281:     header := make([]int, size, size)
	     .      .  282:     types := make([]int, size, size)
	     .      .  283:     last := make([]int, size, size)
	     .      .  284:     nodes := make([]*UnionFindNode, size, size)
	     .      .  285:
	     .      .  286:     for i := 0; i < size; i++ {
	     2     79  287:             nodes[i] = new(UnionFindNode)
	     .      .  288:     }
	...
	(pprof)

Every time `FindLoops` is called, it allocates some sizable bookkeeping structures.
Since the benchmark calls `FindLoops` 50 times, these add up to a significant amount
of garbage, so a significant amount of work for the garbage collector.

Having a garbage-collected language doesn't mean you can ignore memory allocation
issues.
In this case, a simple solution is to introduce a cache so that each call to `FindLoops`
reuses the previous call's storage when possible.
(In fact, in Hundt's paper, he explains that the Java program needed just this change to
get anything like reasonable performance, but he did not make the same change in the
other garbage-collected implementations.)

We'll add a global `cache` structure:

	var cache struct {
	    size int
	    nonBackPreds [][]int
	    backPreds [][]int
	    number []int
	    header []int
	    types []int
	    last []int
	    nodes []*UnionFindNode
	}

and then have `FindLoops` consult it as a replacement for allocation:

	    if cache.size < size {
	        cache.size = size
	        cache.nonBackPreds = make([][]int, size)
	        cache.backPreds = make([][]int, size)
	        cache.number = make([]int, size)
	        cache.header = make([]int, size)
	        cache.types = make([]int, size)
	        cache.last = make([]int, size)
	        cache.nodes = make([]*UnionFindNode, size)
	        for i := range cache.nodes {
	            cache.nodes[i] = new(UnionFindNode)
	        }
	    }

	    nonBackPreds := cache.nonBackPreds[:size]
	    for i := range nonBackPreds {
	        nonBackPreds[i] = nonBackPreds[i][:0]
	    }
	    backPreds := cache.backPreds[:size]
	    for i := range nonBackPreds {
	        backPreds[i] = backPreds[i][:0]
	    }
	    number := cache.number[:size]
	    header := cache.header[:size]
	    types := cache.types[:size]
	    last := cache.last[:size]
	    nodes := cache.nodes[:size]

Such a global variable is bad engineering practice, of course: it means that
concurrent calls to `FindLoops` are now unsafe.
For now, we are making the minimal possible changes in order to understand what
is important for the performance of our program; this change is simple and mirrors
the code in the Java implementation.
The final version of the Go program will use a separate `LoopFinder` instance to
track this memory, restoring the possibility of concurrent use.

	$ make havlak5
	go build havlak5.go
	$ ./xtime ./havlak5
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	8.03u 0.06s 8.11r 770352kB ./havlak5
	$
(See the [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/commit/2d41d6d16286b8146a3f697dd4074deac60d12a4][diff from havlak4]])

There's more we can do to clean up the program and make it faster, but none of
it requires profiling techniques that we haven't already shown.
The work list used in the inner loop can be reused across iterations and across
calls to `FindLoops`, and it can be combined with the separate “node pool” generated
during that pass.
Similarly, the loop graph storage can be reused on each iteration instead of reallocated.
In addition to these performance changes, the
[[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/blob/master/havlak/havlak6.go][final version]]
is written using idiomatic Go style, using data structures and methods.
The stylistic changes have only a minor effect on the run time: the algorithm and
constraints are unchanged.

The final version runs in 2.29 seconds and uses 351 MB of memory:

	$ make havlak6
	go build havlak6.go
	$ ./xtime ./havlak6
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	2.26u 0.02s 2.29r 360224kB ./havlak6
	$ 

That's 11 times faster than the program we started with.
Even if we disable reuse of the generated loop graph, so that the only cached memory
is the loop finding bookeeping, the program still runs 6.7x faster than the original
and uses 1.5x less memory.

	$ ./xtime ./havlak6 -reuseloopgraph=false
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	3.69u 0.06s 3.76r 797120kB ./havlak6 -reuseloopgraph=false
	$

Of course, it's no longer fair to compare this Go program to the original C++
program, which used inefficient data structures like `set`s where `vector`s would
be more appropriate.
As a sanity check, we translated the final Go program into
[[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/blob/master/havlak/havlak6.cc][equivalent C++ code]].
Its execution time is similar to the Go program's:

	$ make havlak6cc
	g++ -O3 -o havlak6cc havlak6.cc
	$ ./xtime ./havlak6cc
	# of loops: 76000 (including 1 artificial root node)
	1.99u 0.19s 2.19r 387936kB ./havlak6cc

The Go program runs almost as fast as the C++ program.
As the C++ program is using automatic deletes and allocation instead of an explicit
cache, the C++ program a bit shorter and easier to write, but not dramatically so:

	$ wc havlak6.cc; wc havlak6.go
	 401 1220 9040 havlak6.cc
	 461 1441 9467 havlak6.go
	$
(See [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/blob/master/havlak/havlak6.cc][havlak6.cc]]
and [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/blob/master/havlak/havlak6.go][havlak6.go]])

Benchmarks are only as good as the programs they measure.
We used `go tool pprof` to study an inefficient Go program and then to improve its
performance by an order of magnitude and to reduce its memory usage by a factor of 3.7.
A subsequent comparison with an equivalently optimized C++ program shows that Go can be
competitive with C++ when programmers are careful about how much garbage is generated
by inner loops.

The program sources, Linux x86-64 binaries, and profiles used to write this post
are available in the [[https://github.com/rsc/benchgraffiti/][benchgraffiti project on GitHub]].

As mentioned above, [[https://golang.org/cmd/go/#Test_packages][`go test`]] includes
these profiling flags already: define a
[[https://golang.org/pkg/testing/][benchmark function]] and you're all set.
There is also a standard HTTP interface to profiling data. In an HTTP server, adding

	import _ "net/http/pprof"

will install handlers for a few URLs under `/debug/pprof/`.
Then you can run `go tool pprof` with a single argument—the URL to your server's
profiling data and it will download and examine a live profile.

	go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/profile   # 30-second CPU profile
	go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/heap      # heap profile
	go tool pprof http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/block     # goroutine blocking profile

The goroutine blocking profile will be explained in a future post. Stay tuned.