Hello GraalVM!

Clojure native executable using GraalVM. 100x Speedup!

Overview

GraalVM is an alternative compiler which can compile Clojure (and many other languages) into a native, statically-linked executable. This executable runs with minimal memory and minimum startup time, just like a C/C++ version of "Hello, World!".

Install GraalVM

The GraalVM distribution is a full OpenJDK-11 distribution. I always install packages like this in /opt, so the final install dir looks like:

/opt/graalvm-ce-java11-19.3.0

Download GraalVM

Download the GraalVM tar file from the the GraalVM Releases page. Unpack the tar file and install it in /opt:

~ > alias d='ls -ldF'

~ > cd ~/Downloads
~/Downloads > d graalvm*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 alan alan 465117693 Nov 26 16:48 graalvm-ce-java11-linux-amd64-19.3.0.tar.gz

~/Downloads > mkdir -p tmp; cd tmp
~/Downloads/tmp > ls -al
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   2 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users   64 Nov  6 13:42 ./
drwx------+ 16 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users  512 Nov  8 11:44 ../

~/Downloads/tmp > tar -xf ../graalvm-ce-java11-linux-amd64-19.3.0.tar.gz
~/Downloads/tmp > d *
drwxr-xr-x  3 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users  96 Nov  8 11:45 graalvm-ce-19.3.0/

~/Downloads/tmp > sudo mkdir -p /opt
Password:

~/Downloads/tmp > sudo mv graalvm-ce-19.2.1  /opt
~/Downloads/tmp > cd /opt
/opt > d graal*
drwxr-xr-x  3 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users  96 Nov  8 11:45 graalvm-ce-19.3.0/

# I like to create a symbolic link so our ~/.bashrc file doesn't need to change when we upgrade graalvm versions
/opt > sudo ln -s graalvm-ce-19.2.1 graalvm

> d /opt/graal*
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root     wheel               17 Nov  8 09:56 /opt/graalvm@ -> graalvm-ce-19.3.0
drwxr-xr-x  3 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users  96 Nov  6 13:42 /opt/graalvm-ce-19.3.0/

Configure your environment

I have the following basic setup in ~/.bashrc

# Utility functions to ease PATH-building syntax
function path_prepend() {
    local path_search_dir=$1
    export PATH="${path_search_dir}:${PATH}"
}
function path_append() {
    local path_search_dir=$1
    export PATH="${PATH}:${path_search_dir}"
}

# Basic PATH
export PATH=.
    path_append ${HOME}/bin
    path_append ${HOME}/opt/bin
    path_append /opt/bin
    path_append /usr/local/bin
    path_append /usr/bin
    path_append /bin

function graalvm() {
  export JAVA_HOME=/opt/graalvm                   # linux version    *** PICK ONE ***
  export JAVA_HOME=/opt/graalvm/Contents/Home     # OSX version      *** PICK ONE ***
  path_prepend ${JAVA_HOME}/bin
  java -version
}

function java13() {
  export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 13)  # Mac OSX java trick
  path_prepend ${JAVA_HOME}/bin
  java -version
}

java13 >& /dev/null  # set java13 to be default

Verify you can switch your environment from the default Java (here, jdk13) to GraalVM’s version of OpenJDK-8:

~/expr/graalvm > java -version    # when login, we were using jdk13
java version "13" 2019-09-17
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 13+33)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 13+33, mixed mode, sharing)

~/expr/graalvm > graalvm          # now, switch to GraalVM (jdk8)
openjdk version "1.8.0_232"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_232-20191009173705.graal.jdk8u-src-tar-gz-b07)
OpenJDK 64-Bit GraalVM CE 19.2.1 (build 25.232-b07-jvmci-19.2-b03, mixed mode)

Install the `native-image` package using `gu`

Verify you can run the `gu` utility:

> gu --help
GraalVM Component Updater v2.0.0

Usage:
  ...<snip>...
  gu install [-0CcDfiLnosruvyxY] <param>  installs a component package
  ...<snip>...

Install `native-image`

~/expr/graalvm > gu install native-image
Downloading: Component catalog from www.graalvm.org
Processing Component: Native Image
Downloading: Component native-image: Native Image  from github.com
Installing new component: Native Image (org.graalvm.native-image, version 19.3.0)

Run hello-world normally

~/expr/graalvm > time lein do clean, run
Hello, World!
Goodbye...
lein do clean, run  9.92s user 0.84s system 225% cpu 4.780 total

Create the uberjar and run it

~/expr/graalvm > time lein uberjar
Compiling hello-world.core
Created /Users/r634165/expr/graalvm/target/hello-world-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
Created /Users/r634165/expr/graalvm/target/hello-world-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar
lein uberjar  11.21s user 2.71s system 182% cpu 7.626 total

~/expr/graalvm > time java -jar target/hello-world-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar
Hello, World!
Goodbye...
java -jar target/hello-world-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar  2.67s user 0.26s system 226% cpu 1.297 total

So, it took 7.6 sec to compile and package the uberjar, and 1.3 seconds to run the uberjar.

Create the native executable and run it

~/expr/graalvm > lein native
Build on Server(pid: 59523, port: 58080)*
[./target/hello-world:59523]    classlist:   2,895.07 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]        (cap):   1,955.86 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]        setup:   3,245.68 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]   (typeflow):   4,537.50 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]    (objects):   2,574.54 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]   (features):     276.47 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]     analysis:   7,572.88 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]     (clinit):     146.73 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]     universe:     436.47 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]      (parse):     528.53 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]     (inline):   1,580.97 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]    (compile):   5,630.39 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]      compile:   8,228.69 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]        image:     875.32 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]        write:     558.38 ms
[./target/hello-world:59523]      [total]:  24,045.25 ms

The GraalVM compiler is similar to the Google Closure compiler used to make GMail, etc super-compact & lightning-fast to download & run over the internet. Besides compiling the source code, it performs a static analysis to eliminate all unreachable code, in addition to normal optimization steps. This results in a minimal executable size, and the fast startup we expect from a statically linked executable (for example, the ls command).

~/expr/graalvm > time target/hello-world
Hello, World!
Goodbye...
target/hello-world  0.00s user 0.00s system 52% cpu 0.009 total

Yes, you read that right! Instead of taking 1.3 seconds to run the uberjar, we needed less than 0.01 seconds to run the native executable, for a speedup of over 130x !

Just for fun, let’s compare to the ls command:

~/expr/graalvm > time ls -ldF *
-rw-r--r--  1 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users  14199 Nov  6 13:51 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--  1 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users   7126 Nov  8 12:47 README.adoc
drwxr-xr-x  3 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users     96 Nov  8 10:48 doc/
-rw-r--r--  1 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users   1528 Nov  7 10:57 hello-world.iml
-rw-r--r--  1 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users    657 Nov  7 10:56 project.clj
drwxr-xr-x  2 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users     64 Nov  6 13:51 resources/
drwxr-xr-x  3 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users     96 Nov  6 13:51 src/
drwxr-xr-x  7 r634165  RBSWA\Domain Users    224 Nov  8 12:06 target/

ls -ldF *  0.00s user 0.00s system 61% cpu 0.010 total

This command required 0.01 seconds, and it is apparent that Clojure+GraalVM has achieved parity with command-line utilities written in C.

Don’t forget about memory usage!

Note that using time as above resolves to a shell built-in command. We can get more information from the standard Unix version of time:

# JVM+UberJar
> /usr/bin/time -l  java -jar target/hello-world-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar
Hello, World!
Goodbye...

        1.20 real         2.47 user         0.24 sys
       409  maximum resident set size (MB)
    100469  page reclaims
      3569  involuntary context switches


# Static Executable
> /usr/bin/time -l  target/hello-world
Hello, World!
Goodbye...
        0.00 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys
         2  maximum resident set size (MB)
       657  page reclaims
         4  involuntary context switches

So we see that the maximum RSS memory requirement was reduced from 409 Mb to 2 Mb. Yes, an improvement over 200x! Note also that context switches have been reduced by 900x, and page reclaims by about 200x.

Here is a quick comparison with Python:

> time python -c 'print("Hello world!")'
Hello world!
0.03s user 0.01s system 80% cpu 0.048 total

> /usr/bin/time -l  python -c 'print("Hello world!")'
Hello world!
        0.04 real         0.02 user         0.01 sys
         6  maximum resident set size (MB)
      2110  page reclaims
        24  involuntary context switches

So the Python version takes 5x longer, and uses 3x more memory.

Uses for Clojure+GraalVM

Anywhere you want to use your favorite language in a constrained environment, where startup speed and/or memory usage is a concern. Obvious use-cases include command-line utilities and cloud serverless functions such as AWS Lambda.

Appendix - More config tricks

I use additional bash functions to help config. Namely:

function isMac() {
  if [[ $(uname -a) =~ "Darwin" ]]; then
    true
  else
    false
  fi
}
function isLinux() {
  if [[ $(uname -a) =~ "Linux" ]]; then
    true
  else
    false
  fi
}

This allows a single .bashrc file to control both linux & Mac computers as follows:

if $(isLinux) ; then #{
  # echo "Found Linux"

  function java13() {
    export JAVA_HOME=/opt/java13
    path_prepend "${JAVA_HOME}/bin"
    java  --version
  }

  function graalvm() {
    export JAVA_HOME=/opt/graalvm
    path_prepend ${JAVA_HOME}/bin
    java -version
  }
fi #}

if $(isMac) ; then #{
  # echo "Found Darwin (block)"
  function java13() {
    export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 13)
    path_prepend ${JAVA_HOME}/bin
    java -version
  }

  function graalvm() {
    export JAVA_HOME=/opt/graalvm/Contents/Home
    path_prepend ${JAVA_HOME}/bin
    java -version
  }


fi #}

java13 >& /dev/null  # ********** default java version to use **********


alias d='    ls -ldF   --color'
alias lal='  ls -alF   --color'

License

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0.

This Source Code may also be made available under the following Secondary Licenses when the conditions for such availability set forth in the Eclipse Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version, with the GNU Classpath Exception which is available at https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html.

100x speedup of Clojure as a native executable using GraalVM

Hello GraalVM!

Overview

Install GraalVM

Download GraalVM

Configure your environment

Install the `native-image` package using `gu`

Verify you can run the `gu` utility:

Install `native-image`

Run hello-world normally

Create the uberjar and run it

Create the native executable and run it

Don’t forget about memory usage!

Uses for Clojure+GraalVM

See also:

Appendix - More config tricks

License

Related Repos

Category: Linux / Miscellaneous
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Last update: May 26, 2023

100x speedup of Clojure as a native executable using GraalVM

Hello GraalVM!

Overview

Install GraalVM

Download GraalVM

Configure your environment

Install the native-image package using gu

Verify you can run the gu utility:

Install native-image

Run hello-world normally

Create the uberjar and run it

Create the native executable and run it

Don’t forget about memory usage!

Uses for Clojure+GraalVM

See also:

Appendix - More config tricks

License

Related Repos

Install the `native-image` package using `gu`

Verify you can run the `gu` utility:

Install `native-image`