Fibon in a Flash

$ git clone git://github.com/dmpots/fibon.git
$ cd fibon
$ git submodule update --init benchmarks
$ cabal configure && cabal build
$ ./dist/build/fibon-run/fibon-run

Introduction

Fibon is a set of tools for running and analysing benchmarks in Haskell. Most importantly, it includes a set of default benchmarks taken from the Hackage open source repository.

Benchmarks

Fibon makes it easy to use either the fibon benchmarks or your own set of benchmarks. Benchmarks are stored in the benchmarks/Fibon/Benchmarks directory. This directory is setup as a git submodule which means you can easily grab the standard suite or use a suite kept under your own source control.

Benchmark Groups

Benchamarks named and organized into groups based on the filesystem organization. For example, a benchmark in the directory benchmarks/Fibon/Benchmarks/Hackage/Agum will have the name Agum an be in the benchmark group Hackage.

Executables

The fibon package builds three tools

1. fibon-run - runs the benchmarks
2. fibon-analyze - analyzes the results of a run
3. fibon-init - utilty used when adding new benchmarks

Size and Tune

Fibon benchmarks can be run with two different input sizes: Test and Ref. The Test size is useful to make sure that a benchmark can run successsfully, but will not give meaningful timings.

Fibon benchmarks can be run under two different tune settings (e.g. compiler optimization settings). The Base and Peak settings can be configured anyway you want to make the desired comparison.

Directory Structure

Source directories ./benchmarks -- benchmark code ./config -- config files ./lib -- common files used by several executables ./tools -- source code for executables

Working directories ./log -- logging output from benchmark runs ./run -- working directory for benchmark runs

Getting the Benchmarks

The benchmarks are kept in a separate repository as a git submodule. You can get the fibon benchmarks by updating the submodule from within your fibon working directory

$ git submodule update --init benchmarks

This will checkout the benchmarks from the fibon-benchmarks repository and place them in your working copy.

Running Benchmarks

The available benchmarks and configurations are discovered when the fibon package is configured. Benchmarks are searched for in the benchmarks/Fibon/Benchmarks directory and configuration files are searched for in the config directory. If a configuration file or benchmark is added, you will need to re-run cabal configure to make them available to the fibon-run tool.

Configuration

Fibon comes with a default configuration. The default configuration will run all benchmarks with the Base setting of -O0 and a Peak setting of -O2 on the Ref size. A configuration file can be used to specify more complicated configurations.

You can get some example configuration by doing $ git submodule update --init config

This will checkout a repository of config files. Note that currently these files contain some user and machine-specific configurations, but should be a useful starting point.

You can also selectively run benchmarks, groups, sizes, and tune settings as described below.

Running

Benchamarks are run with the fibon-run tool. Running fibon-run with no arguments will use the default config file. An alternate config file can be specified with the -c flag. Also, you can give a list of benchmarks or groups to run on the command line. Use --help to see a full list of options.

Running the benchmarks will produce some logging to standard out and create four output files in the log directory.

1. *.LOG - the full log of the run
2. *.SUMMARY - the mean runtimes of each benchmark
3. *.RESULTS - the full results (passed to fibon-analyse)

Analyzing Benchmark Results

Benchmarks can be analyzed by the fibon-analyse tool.

$ fibon-analyse log/000.default.RESULTS

Adding New Benchmarks

TODO

Benchmark Notes

Ghc610 ChameneosRedux Does not work with -O0. Gets "thread blocked indefinitely" exception

Mandelbrot The Test size gives different result, but the Ref size is ok. Think it is just some kind of floating point wibbles.