graal + node.js: how does it work?

[Grant Haywood]

Am I mistaken but isint the point of graal/node to be able to access c++
based node modules?
Fwiw id love to see support for native node modules in vert.x through
graal.

On Dec 23, 2017 9:21 PM, "Adam McMahon" <adam at cs.miami.edu> wrote:

Jaroslav and group,

I had a chance to run some tests running node.js on the JVM using the
Vert.x library. I call this project node.v (node running on vert.x).
Included are some benchmarks of my approach vs graal-node and native node.

*[1] node.v*

Project is found at https://github.com/AdamMcM/node.v (the readme has setup
instructions if anyone is interested).

Vert.x is a polyglot inspired node library for the JVM that has many
features similar to node already written in Javascript using Nashorn. For
most of the functionality in Node, One can implement node.js by writing a
small wrapper that calls down to the JS Vert.x API. For example, Vert.x
already has a method called readFile which is very similar to node’s
fs.readFile: https://github.com/AdamMcM/node.v/blob/master/fs.js


*[2] Performance*

Take this all with a grain of salt :)

In the two examples I ran, Node.v is almost as performant as native
node.js, and it is significantly faster than graal’s node implementation.
In fact, graal-node runs so much slower than native node that I am
wondering if I have a setup issue. Based on Devoxx presentations, I was
expecting it to be near native node performance.

Here are some benchmarks.

*[2a] HelloWorld. *
https://github.com/AdamMcM/node.v/blob/master/helloTest.js

10 concurrent clients, Node.v is the fastest, with graal-native the
slowest. *Node.v x3* indictes that 3 instnces of vert.x were used. This is
similar to node’s cluster module, but does not require any change to the
script, just adding “-–instances 3” to the command line, it will
automatically scale to 3 event loops. No other code changes are necessary.

numbers are in requests per second

node.v x3:  14182          (long jvm warmup: 100k requests)
node.v : 10103               (long jvm warmup)
node9:  8172
node-graal-jvm: 5065       (long jvm warmup)
node-graal-native: 4101

[2a] FileTest https://github.com/AdamMcM/node.v/blob/master/fileTest.js

Read a small file, 36 bytes, and send it back to the client 10 times using
chunked encoding.

Node9 3593
node.v x3: 3354 (after long warm up)
node.v : 1900 (after long warm up)
node-graal-native: 228
node-graal-jvm: 228


*[3] Discussion*

Node.v is a small proof of concept that node.js can be relatively easily
implemented onto the JVM using the Vert.x library. To do so, one can create
wrapper functions down to the Javascript Vert.x API. Unless there was a
setup issue, node.v is significantly faster than node-graal in these
examples. Node.v uses Nashorn, perhaps it could be improved even more by
using graal.js instead.

This was just a proof of concept project for me to learn more about node.js
on the JVM, I will likely add a few more examples and flush out a few more
features, but I do not intend (at this time) to implement the entire
node.js API (as my day job keeps me pretty busy).

Best and Happy Holidays,

-Adam





On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 3:40 AM, Jaroslav Tulach <jaroslav.tulach at oracle.com
> wrote:

> Hello Adam,
> a small note on performance:
>
> On úterý 19. prosince 2017 22:14:35 CET Adam McMahon wrote:
> > But in terms of
> > performance, my approach runs about the same as vert.x (if you are
> familiar
> > with that performance), as mine is just a thin call down to vert.x from
> JS.
>
> This would be the kind of reply I'd use before joining the Graal team.
> However
> now I have to ask:
>
> - what does a "thin call from JS" mean?
> - how fast the JS implementation is?
>
> First of all, from all the Java based JavaScript implementations, only
> Graal.js is comparable in terms of speed with V8. All other ones are
> significantly slower. Secondly, the "thin call from JS" may require
> argument
> mangling and possibly also inlining boundary. Again, this is something
> Graal +
> Graal.js can eliminate and make the execution faster.
>
> > ... share my code on github once I get an example together a half-decent
> > example that works well on all 3 systems (node.js, graal+node, node
> +vertxWrapper).
>
> Of course, the performance depends on the actual usage. Once your example
> works, it would be nice to turn it into a benchmark and measure the # of
> operations per second each version can handle.
>
> Good luck.
> -jt
>
>