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0 pointsRecurecur9y ago0 comments

In general (not for server apps), two major benefits of Scala Native are:

  - Predictable latency if desired (optional GC)
  - Very low call overhead for C ABI

As to your point about memory use, Java trades memory for convenience, not performance. GC requires substantially more memory for similar performance. I read an IBM blog (which I can't find at the moment) within the last week which showed a Swift web service running slightly faster than Java, but using only half the memory.

The following comparison is also interesting, with a JSON serialization example in Swift outpacing Spring/Java by a factor of ten... This is also running on Linux instead of macOS.

https://medium.com/@qutheory/server-side-swift-vs-the-other-...

0 comments

SureshG9y ago

The medium post is really a stupid benchmark. Check this for a real JSON serialization benchmark - https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r13&hw=...

usrusr9y ago

To be fair, in that list, the spring entry didn't exactly run circles around the competition either. It's somewhere between the better PHP contenders and even behind grails (which can be pretty accurately described as spring with layer of slowness added on top). Really looks like there is something unfortunate going on with the idiomatic way to implement those examples on spring.

wtetzner9y ago

> Predictable latency if desired (optional GC)

Does Scala Native support not using a GC? It seems like it would be difficult to get Scala working without a GC.

RecurecurOP9y ago

It supports direct allocation via both the heap and the stack.

  type Vec = CStruct3[Double, Double, Double]

  val vec = stackalloc[Vec] // allocate c struct on stack
  !vec._1 = 10.0            // initialize fields
  !vec._2 = 20.0
  !vec._3 = 30.0
  length(vec)               // pass by reference

...and...

  @extern object stdlib {
    def malloc(size: CSize): Ptr[Byte] = extern
  }

  val ptr = stdlib.malloc(32)

http://www.scala-native.org/en/latest/

Otherwise it currently uses the Boehm GC.

One big area that needs more work:

  "Scala Native doesn’t yet provide libraries for parallel
   multi-threaded programming and assumes single-threaded    
   execution by default."

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse