Re: QuickBinary extension for PHP

From: Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 19:08:49 +0000
Subject: Re: QuickBinary extension for PHP
References: 1  Groups: php.pecl.dev 
Request: Send a blank email to pecl-dev+get-11570@lists.php.net to get a copy of this message
On 02/25/2014 08:35 AM, Chung Leong wrote:
I would like to submit my extension for consideration for inclusion in PECL. QB is an extension designed to enable PHP applications to better handle computationally intensive tasks. While PHP is in general fast enough for most things, in certain scenarios dynamic typing simply imposes too great an overhead. This happens most often in image processing, where the number of operations can easily exceed 10 million. QB alleviates this limitation by translating and reinterpreting Zend bytecodes through a statically-typed virtual machine, with the type information embedded in a function's Doc Comments. It also provides the facility to compile to native code through an external C compiler, for even greater level of performance. QB is not a general-purpose accelerator. It's primarily designed for vector calculation. The relationship to PHP is somewhat like OpenCL to C++: there are restrictions on what can be done and some differences in semantics. Multiplication involving arrays is possible in QB, for instance. Code interpreted through the QB VM also has access to built-in functions that don't exist in PHP (e.g. dot product). Starting from version 2.0, QB can dispatch sections of code through multiple CPU cores. A future goal is to make use of the GPU through OpenCL. To illustrate the performance gain possible, I'll use a test from the computer language shootout. On my Celeron-powered laptop, the fannkuch-redux script (N = 500) takes 21 seconds to finish in PHP. Modified for execution in QB, the execution time drops to 1.87 seconds. Once compiled to native code, it drops to 0.40 second--close to what you get from straight C. More information about the extension can be found at http://www.php-qb.net.
On older-but-still-common Linuxes, there are some build issues. If you decide not to support these platforms, is there anyway you can fail earlier during configuration and give a good error message? On more recent versions there are some warnings but the tests run fine. Chris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Oracle Linux 6.4 64-bit (identical to RHEL 6.4) with PHP 5.5.9 using gcc version 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3) (GCC): 1. buildconf warning 
    $ ./buildconf --force
    Forcing buildconf
    Removing configure caches
    buildconf: checking installation...
    buildconf: autoconf version 2.63 (ok)
    rebuilding configure
    ext/qb/config.m4:43: warning: AC_COMPILE_IFELSE was called before AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS
    ../../lib/autoconf/specific.m4:386: AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS is expanded from...
    ext/qb/config.m4:43: warning: AC_RUN_IFELSE was called before AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS
    rebuilding main/php_config.h.in
    ext/qb/config.m4:43: warning: AC_COMPILE_IFELSE was called before AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS
    ../../lib/autoconf/specific.m4:386: AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS is expanded from...
    ext/qb/config.m4:43: warning: AC_RUN_IFELSE was called before AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS
2. Help text alignment 
    The help message in "./configure --help" is not aligned with other
    extensions' messages:

      ...
      --disable-posix         Disable POSIX-like functions
      --with-pspell=DIR       Include PSPELL support.
                              GNU Aspell version 0.50.0 or higher required
      --enable-qb           Enable qb support
      --with-sse=VER          Enable SSE optimization.  VER is the SSE version
      --with-avx=VER          Enable AVX optimization.  VER is the AVX version
      --with-cpu=arch         Enable optimization specific to CPU archecture
      ...
3. Compile warning 
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c: In function ‘qb_encode_address’:
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:87: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:53: note: expected ‘void **’ but argument is of type ‘uint32_t **’
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:98: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:53: note: expected ‘void **’ but argument is of type ‘uint32_t **’
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:99: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
    /home/cjones/j/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:53: note: expected ‘void **’ but argument is of type ‘uint32_t **’
4. Test Results: 
    Number of tests :  493               394
    Tests skipped   :   99 ( 20.1%) --------
    Tests warned    :    0 (  0.0%) (  0.0%)
    Tests failed    :    0 (  0.0%) (  0.0%)
    Expected fail   :    0 (  0.0%) (  0.0%)
    Tests passed    :  394 ( 79.9%) (100.0%)
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Time taken      :   41 seconds
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Oracle Linux 5.10 64-bit (identical to RHEL 5.10) with PHP 5.5.9 using gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-54): 1. buildconf error 
     $ ./buildconf --force
     Forcing buildconf
     Removing configure caches
     buildconf: checking installation...
     buildconf: autoconf version 2.59 (ok)
     rebuilding configure
     configure:101040: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS
           If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
           See the Autoconf documentation.
     rebuilding main/php_config.h.in
When later running './configure --enable-qb' there is the message: 
     checking whether to enable qb support... yes
     checking whether to use SSE instructions on x86 processors... no
     checking whether to use AVX instructions on x86 processors... no
     checking whether to enable CPU-specific optimization... no
     checking for library containing exp... none required
     ./configure: line 101040: AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS: command not found
2. Compile warnings 3a. /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_function_inliner.h:52:7: warning: no newline at end of file 3b. /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_printer.h:40:7: warning: no newline at end of file 3c. In file included from /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb.h:142, 
                     from /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:21:
    /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c: In function ‘qb_encode_address’:
    /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:87: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
    /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:98: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
    /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_encoder.c:99: warning: passing argument 3 of ‘qb_get_pointer’ from incompatible pointer type
3. Compile error 
    In file included from /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb.h:142,
                     from /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_interpreter_functions_gcc.c:21:
    /tmp/php-5.5.9/ext/qb/qb_interpreter_functions_gcc.c:33374: error: ‘qsort_r’ undeclared here (not in a function)
    make: *** [ext/qb/qb_interpreter_functions_gcc.lo] Error 1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- christopher.jones@oracle.com http://twitter.com/ghrd Free PHP & Oracle book: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/php/underground-php-oracle-manual-098250.html

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