How can I improve performance of Field.set (perhap using MethodHandles)?
EDIT thanks to holger I noticed that I really should have used invokeExact, so I decided to remove the stuff about other jdks and use invokeExact only... using -server or not still does not really make a difference for me though
The main difference between using reflection and using MethodHandles is that for reflection you have a security check for every call, in case of MethodHandles, only for the creation of the handle.
If you look at this
class Test {
public Object someField;
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
Test t = new Test();
Field field = Test.class.getDeclaredField("someField");
Object value = new Object();
for (int outer=0; outer<50; outer++) {
long start = System.nanoTime();
for (int i=0; i<100000000; i++) {
field.set(t, value);
}
long time = (System.nanoTime()-start)/1000000;
System.out.println("it took "+time+"ms");
}
}
}
Then I get on my computer times 45000ms on jdk7u40 (jdk8 and pre 7u25 perform much better though)
Now let's look at the same program using handles
class Test {
public Object someField;
public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
Test t = new Test();
Field field = Test.class.getDeclaredField("someField");
MethodHandle mh = MethodHandles.lookup().unreflectSetter(field);
Object value = new Object();
for (int outer=0; outer<50; outer++) {
long start = System.nanoTime();
for (int i=0; i<100000000; i++) {
mh.invokeExact(t, value);
}
long time = (System.nanoTime()-start)/1000000;
System.out.println("it took "+time+"ms");
}
}
}
7u40 says roughly 1288ms. So I can confirm Holger's 30 times on 7u40. On 7u06 this code handles would be slower because reflection was several times faster and on jdk8 everything is new again.
As for why you didn't see an improvement... difficult to say. What I did was microbenchmarking. That doesn't tell anything about a real application at all. But using those results I would assume you either use an old jdk version, or you don't reuse the handle often enough. Because while executing a handle can be faster, the creation of the handle can cost much more then the creation of a Field.
Now the biggest problem point... I did see you want this for google appengine... And I must say, you can test locally as much as you want, what counts in the end is what the performance of the application on the google site will be. Afaik they use a modified OpenJDK, but what version with what modification they don't say. With Jdk7 being that unstable you could be unlucky or not. Maybe they added special code for reflection, then all bets are off anyway. And even ignoring that... maybe the payment model changed again, but usually you want to avoid datastore access by caching because it costs. If that still holds, is it then realistic that any handle will be called let's say 10.000 times on average?
Update: since some people started a pointless discussion about “how to benchmark” I will emphasize the solution to your problem contained in my answer, now right at the beginning:
You can use invokeExact even in your reflective context where you don’t have the exact type signature by converting the MethodHandle using asType to a handle taking Object as arguments. In environments affected by the performance difference between invoke and invokeExact, using invokeExact on such a converting handle is still way faster than using invoke on a direct method handle.
Original answer:
The problem is indeed that you are not using invokeExact. Below is a little benchmark program showing the results of different ways of incrementing an int field. Using invoke instead of invokeExact leads to a performance drop below the speed of Reflection.
You receive the WrongMethodTypeException because the MethodHandle is strongly typed. It expects an exact invocation signature matching type type of the field and owner. But you can use the handle to create a new MethodHandle wrapping the necessary type conversions. Using invokeExact on that handle using a generic signature (i.e. (Object,Object)Object) will be still way more efficient than using invoke with a dynamic type conversion.
The results on my machine using 1.7.0_40 were:
direct : 27,415ns reflection : 1088,462ns method handle : 7133,221ns mh invokeExact: 60,928ns generic mh : 68,025ns
and using a -server JVM yields to a baffling
direct : 26,953ns reflection : 629,161ns method handle : 1513,226ns mh invokeExact: 22,325ns generic mh : 43,608ns
I don’t think that it has much real life relevance seeing a MethodHandle being faster than a direct operation but it proves that MethodHandles are not slow on Java7.
And the generic MethodHandle will still outperform Reflection (whilst using invoke does not).
import java.lang.invoke.MethodHandle;
import java.lang.invoke.MethodHandles;
import java.lang.reflect.Field;
public class FieldMethodHandle
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
final int warmup=1_000_000, iterations=1_000_000;
for(int i=0; i<warmup; i++)
{
incDirect();
incByReflection();
incByDirectHandle();
incByDirectHandleExact();
incByGeneric();
}
long direct=0, refl=0, handle=0, invokeExact=0, genericH=0;
for(int i=0; i<iterations; i++)
{
final long t0=System.nanoTime();
incDirect();
final long t1=System.nanoTime();
incByReflection();
final long t2=System.nanoTime();
incByDirectHandle();
final long t3=System.nanoTime();
incByDirectHandleExact();
final long t4=System.nanoTime();
incByGeneric();
final long t5=System.nanoTime();
direct+=t1-t0;
refl+=t2-t1;
handle+=t3-t2;
invokeExact+=t4-t3;
genericH+=t5-t4;
}
final int result = VALUE.value;
// check (use) the value to avoid over-optimizations
if(result != (warmup+iterations)*5) throw new AssertionError();
double r=1D/iterations;
System.out.printf("%-14s:\t%8.3fns%n", "direct", direct*r);
System.out.printf("%-14s:\t%8.3fns%n", "reflection", refl*r);
System.out.printf("%-14s:\t%8.3fns%n", "method handle", handle*r);
System.out.printf("%-14s:\t%8.3fns%n", "mh invokeExact", invokeExact*r);
System.out.printf("%-14s:\t%8.3fns%n", "generic mh", genericH*r);
}
static class MyValueHolder
{
int value;
}
static final MyValueHolder VALUE=new MyValueHolder();
static final MethodHandles.Lookup LOOKUP=MethodHandles.lookup();
static final MethodHandle DIRECT_GET_MH, DIRECT_SET_MH;
static final MethodHandle GENERIC_GET_MH, GENERIC_SET_MH;
static final Field REFLECTION;
static
{
try
{
REFLECTION = MyValueHolder.class.getDeclaredField("value");
DIRECT_GET_MH = LOOKUP.unreflectGetter(REFLECTION);
DIRECT_SET_MH = LOOKUP.unreflectSetter(REFLECTION);
GENERIC_GET_MH = DIRECT_GET_MH.asType(DIRECT_GET_MH.type().generic());
GENERIC_SET_MH = DIRECT_SET_MH.asType(DIRECT_SET_MH.type().generic());
}
catch(NoSuchFieldException | IllegalAccessException ex)
{
throw new ExceptionInInitializerError(ex);
}
}
static void incDirect()
{
VALUE.value++;
}
static void incByReflection()
{
try
{
REFLECTION.setInt(VALUE, REFLECTION.getInt(VALUE)+1);
}
catch(IllegalAccessException ex)
{
throw new AssertionError(ex);
}
}
static void incByDirectHandle()
{
try
{
Object target=VALUE;
Object o=GENERIC_GET_MH.invoke(target);
o=((Integer)o)+1;
DIRECT_SET_MH.invoke(target, o);
}
catch(Throwable ex)
{
throw new AssertionError(ex);
}
}
static void incByDirectHandleExact()
{
try
{
DIRECT_SET_MH.invokeExact(VALUE, (int)DIRECT_GET_MH.invokeExact(VALUE)+1);
}
catch(Throwable ex)
{
throw new AssertionError(ex);
}
}
static void incByGeneric()
{
try
{
Object target=VALUE;
Object o=GENERIC_GET_MH.invokeExact(target);
o=((Integer)o)+1;
o=GENERIC_SET_MH.invokeExact(target, o);
}
catch(Throwable ex)
{
throw new AssertionError(ex);
}
}
}
2015-06-01: Updated to reflect @JoeC's comment about another case when handles are static. Also updated to latest JMH and re-ran on modern hardware. The conclusion stays almost the same.
Please do proper benchmarking, it is arguably not that hard with JMH. Once you do that, the answer becomes obvious. It can also showcase the proper use of invokeExact (requires target/source 1.7 to compile and run):
@Warmup(iterations = 5, time = 1, timeUnit = TimeUnit.SECONDS)
@Measurement(iterations = 5, time = 1, timeUnit = TimeUnit.SECONDS)
@Fork(3)
@BenchmarkMode(Mode.AverageTime)
@OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS)
@State(Scope.Thread)
public class MHOpto {
private int value = 42;
private static final Field static_reflective;
private static final MethodHandle static_unreflect;
private static final MethodHandle static_mh;
private static Field reflective;
private static MethodHandle unreflect;
private static MethodHandle mh;
// We would normally use @Setup, but we need to initialize "static final" fields here...
static {
try {
reflective = MHOpto.class.getDeclaredField("value");
unreflect = MethodHandles.lookup().unreflectGetter(reflective);
mh = MethodHandles.lookup().findGetter(MHOpto.class, "value", int.class);
static_reflective = reflective;
static_unreflect = unreflect;
static_mh = mh;
} catch (IllegalAccessException | NoSuchFieldException e) {
throw new IllegalStateException(e);
}
}
@Benchmark
public int plain() {
return value;
}
@Benchmark
public int dynamic_reflect() throws InvocationTargetException, IllegalAccessException {
return (int) reflective.get(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int dynamic_unreflect_invoke() throws Throwable {
return (int) unreflect.invoke(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int dynamic_unreflect_invokeExact() throws Throwable {
return (int) unreflect.invokeExact(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int dynamic_mh_invoke() throws Throwable {
return (int) mh.invoke(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int dynamic_mh_invokeExact() throws Throwable {
return (int) mh.invokeExact(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int static_reflect() throws InvocationTargetException, IllegalAccessException {
return (int) static_reflective.get(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int static_unreflect_invoke() throws Throwable {
return (int) static_unreflect.invoke(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int static_unreflect_invokeExact() throws Throwable {
return (int) static_unreflect.invokeExact(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int static_mh_invoke() throws Throwable {
return (int) static_mh.invoke(this);
}
@Benchmark
public int static_mh_invokeExact() throws Throwable {
return (int) static_mh.invokeExact(this);
}
}
On 1x4x2 i7-4790K, JDK 8u40, Linux x86_64 it yields:
Benchmark Mode Cnt Score Error Units
MHOpto.dynamic_mh_invoke avgt 25 4.393 ± 0.003 ns/op
MHOpto.dynamic_mh_invokeExact avgt 25 4.394 ± 0.007 ns/op
MHOpto.dynamic_reflect avgt 25 5.230 ± 0.020 ns/op
MHOpto.dynamic_unreflect_invoke avgt 25 4.404 ± 0.023 ns/op
MHOpto.dynamic_unreflect_invokeExact avgt 25 4.397 ± 0.014 ns/op
MHOpto.plain avgt 25 1.858 ± 0.002 ns/op
MHOpto.static_mh_invoke avgt 25 1.862 ± 0.015 ns/op
MHOpto.static_mh_invokeExact avgt 25 1.859 ± 0.002 ns/op
MHOpto.static_reflect avgt 25 4.274 ± 0.011 ns/op
MHOpto.static_unreflect_invoke avgt 25 1.859 ± 0.002 ns/op
MHOpto.static_unreflect_invokeExact avgt 25 1.858 ± 0.002 ns/op
...which suggests MH are really much faster than Reflection in this particular case (this is because the access checks against the private field is done at lookup time, and not at the invocation time). dynamic_* cases simulate the case when the MethodHandles and/or Fields are not statically known, e.g. pulled from Map<String, MethodHandle> or something like it. Conversely, static_* cases are those where the invokers are statically known.
Notice the reflective performance is on par with MethodHandles in dynamic_* cases, this is because reflection is heavily optimized further in JDK 8 (because really, you don't need the access check to read your own fields), so the answer may be "just" switching to JDK 8 ;)
static_* cases are even faster, because the MethoHandles.invoke calls are aggressively inlined. This eliminates part of the type checking in MH cases. But, in reflection cases, there are still quick checks present, and therefore, it lags behind.