%0 Conference Paper %1 Wang:2014:ORV %A Wang, Haichuan %A Wu, Peng %A Padua, David %B Proceedings of Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization %D 2014 %I ACM %K AST Bytecode Bytecode2Bytecode Interpreter Orbit R %P 295--305 %R 10.1145/2544137.2544153 %T Optimizing R VM: Allocation Removal and Path Length Reduction via Interpreter-level Specialization %X The performance of R, a popular data analysis language, was never properly understood. Some claimed their R codes ran as efficiently as any native code, others quoted orders of magnitude slowdown of R codes with respect to equivalent C implementations. We found both claims to be true depending on how an R code is written. This paper introduces a first classification of R programming styles into Type I (looping over data), Type II (vector programming), and Type III (glue codes). The most serious overhead of R are mostly manifested on Type I R codes, whereas many Type III R codes can be quite fast. This paper focuses on improving the performance of Type I R codes. We propose the ORBIT VM, an extension of the GNU R VM, to perform aggressive removal of allocated objects and reduction of instruction path lengths in the GNU R VM via profile-driven specialization techniques. The ORBIT VM is fully compatible with the R language and is purely based on interpreted execution. It is a specialization JIT and runtime focusing on data representation specialization and operation specialization. For our benchmarks of Type I R codes, ORBIT is able to achieve an average of 3.5X speedups over the current release of GNU R VM and outperforms most other R optimization projects that are currently available. %@ 978-1-4503-2670-4

@inproceedings{Wang:2014:ORV, abstract = {The performance of R, a popular data analysis language, was never properly understood. Some claimed their R codes ran as efficiently as any native code, others quoted orders of magnitude slowdown of R codes with respect to equivalent C implementations. We found both claims to be true depending on how an R code is written. This paper introduces a first classification of R programming styles into Type I (looping over data), Type II (vector programming), and Type III (glue codes). The most serious overhead of R are mostly manifested on Type I R codes, whereas many Type III R codes can be quite fast. This paper focuses on improving the performance of Type I R codes. We propose the ORBIT VM, an extension of the GNU R VM, to perform aggressive removal of allocated objects and reduction of instruction path lengths in the GNU R VM via profile-driven specialization techniques. The ORBIT VM is fully compatible with the R language and is purely based on interpreted execution. It is a specialization JIT and runtime focusing on data representation specialization and operation specialization. For our benchmarks of Type I R codes, ORBIT is able to achieve an average of 3.5X speedups over the current release of GNU R VM and outperforms most other R optimization projects that are currently available.}, acmid = {2544153}, added-at = {2014-03-19T15:03:27.000+0100}, articleno = {295}, author = {Wang, Haichuan and Wu, Peng and Padua, David}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2ccc26dd39efd5e0f8b04199ab86ec725/gron}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization}, description = {Optimizing R VM}, doi = {10.1145/2544137.2544153}, interhash = {990826b7d2a8e2a41192f97101937db6}, intrahash = {ccc26dd39efd5e0f8b04199ab86ec725}, isbn = {978-1-4503-2670-4}, keywords = {AST Bytecode Bytecode2Bytecode Interpreter Orbit R}, location = {Orlando, FL, USA}, numpages = {11}, pages = {295--305}, publisher = {ACM}, series = {CGO'14}, timestamp = {2014-03-19T15:03:27.000+0100}, title = {Optimizing R VM: Allocation Removal and Path Length Reduction via Interpreter-level Specialization}, year = 2014 }