Bob Nystrom
dbf0131776
Migrate the clock timing functionality from the OS class to the IO class across all benchmark scripts and the core library. Remove the os_clock native function and its associated OS class definition from wren_core.c, while adding a new ioClock native in wren_io.c that uses the same clock()/CLOCKS_PER_SEC logic. Update all benchmark files (binary_trees, fib, for, method_call) to reference IO.clock instead of OS.clock for both start time and elapsed time calculations.
The benchmarks in here attempt to faithfully implement the exact same algorithm in a few different languages. We're using Lua, Python, and Ruby for comparison here because those are all in Wren's ballpark: dynamically-typed, object-oriented, bytecode-compiled.
A bit about each benchmark:
binary_trees
This benchmark stresses object creation and garbage collection. It builds a few big, deeply nested binaries and then traverses them.
fib
This is just a simple naïve Fibonacci number calculator. It was the first benchmark I wrote when Wren supported little more than function calls and arithmetic. It isn't particularly representative of real-world code, but it does stress function call and arithmetic.
for
This microbenchmark just tests the performance of for loops. Not too useful, but i used it when implementing for in Wren to make sure it wasn't too far off the mark.
method_call
This is the most useful benchmark: it tests dynamic dispatch and polymorphism. You'll note that the main iteration loop is unrolled in all of the implementations. This is to ensure that the loop overhead itself doesn't dwarf the method call time.