main.tex

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\title[2023-03-06-awkwardforth-for-atlas]{All about AwkwardForth}
\author{Jim Pivarski, Aryan Roy}
\institute{Princeton University, Manipal Institute of Technology}
\date{March 6, 2023}

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\begin{document}

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  \titlepage
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%  \tableofcontents
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\begin{frame}{Introduction: what is AwkwardForth?}
\begin{center}
\begin{minipage}{0.89\linewidth}
\large\setlength{\baselineskip}{0.55 cm}

\vspace{0.5 cm}
AwkwardForth is an internal DSL within Awkward Array for accelerating sequential (non-columnar) data-ingest processes that must be discovered at runtime, avoiding a JIT-compilation toolchain as a dependency because Awkward Array is a foundational library.

\vspace{0.5 cm}
\uncover<2->{It has a stable API because an external package, Uproot, uses it heavily.}

\vspace{0.5 cm}
\uncover<3->{Because of all the qualifications in its justification, I doubt other projects would ever need it.}
\end{minipage}
\end{center}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Conclusions}
\large
\begin{itemize}
\item<2-> You probably don't need it.
\end{itemize}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{\mbox{ }}
\Huge
\begin{center}
\textcolor{darkblue}{\bf BACKUP}
\end{center}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Uproot-Awkward problem (for more-complex-than-jagged-arrays)}
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\only<1>{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkward-uproot-interaction-1.pdf}}\only<2>{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkward-uproot-interaction-2.pdf}}\only<3>{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkward-uproot-interaction-3.pdf}}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{We need a deserialization language; why Forth?}
\vspace{0.5 cm}
Forth was promoted in the early 1980's as an alternative to compiled languages and (slow) BASIC. For example, it was the only language that could be written on the first Macintosh and produce applications that look and feel like compiled ones.

\vspace{0.5 cm}
\begin{columns}
\column{0.5\linewidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[height=5 cm]{PLOTS/elizabeth-rather-the-computer-chronicles.png}

\column{0.5\linewidth}
\centering
\includegraphics[height=5 cm]{PLOTS/macintosh-forth-code.jpg}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{What Forth looks like (good for code generation!)}
\vspace{0.5 cm}
\includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{PLOTS/forth-example.png}

\vspace{0.15 cm}
Almost no syntax; each whitespace-separated word performs an action on a stack of integers. This stack is the only data. Apart from the ability to define new words and the lack of jumps, it's essentially an assembler for a virtual stack-based machine.
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Adapted for data-ingest}
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{PLOTS/forth-parsing-example.png}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Summary of the argument}
\large
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\begin{enumerate}\setlength{\itemsep}{0.35 cm}
\item<1-> Uproot and Awkward need a way to talk to each other (neither are human).
\item<2-> Uproot expresses a procedure to turn bytes into Awkward Arrays.
\item<3-> Awkward needs to execute this procedure quickly.
\item<4-> We don't consider bundling a JIT-compiler into Awkward to be an option.
\item<5-> Forth is an {\it interpreted} language on a virtual machine, like Python, but it's so stripped down that it doesn't have most of the things that make Python slow. AwkwardForth instruction $\sim$5~ns, Python instruction $\sim$900~ns.
\item<6-> Bundling AwkwardForth in Awkward Array adds a few kilobytes without any dependencies. (Sssh! No one needs to know!)
\end{enumerate}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{The language was implemented 2 years ago}
\vspace{0.16 cm}
\begin{columns}
\column{1.1475\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/AwkwardForth-paper.png}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Uproot was updated to use it last summer (version 5.0)}
\vspace{0.6 cm}
\begin{columns}
\column{1.1\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/AwkwardForth-paper-2.png}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{The language is fully documented (so it's a stable API)}
\vspace{0.17 cm}
\begin{columns}
\column{1.15\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/AwkwardForth-documentation.png}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Fixing Uproot's problem with non-columnar deserialization}
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\textcolor{darkorange}{\bf \centering This is the {\it predicted} performance (2 years ago, in proof-of-concept demo).}

\mbox{ } \hfill \includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{PLOTS/AwkwardForth-performance-ROOT.pdf} \hfill \mbox{ }

Float and vector-of-float are columnar (and the purple point is 5$\times$ too low, a {\it mistake}).

Vector-of-vector-of-float and above are non-columnar.
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Fixing Uproot's problem with non-columnar deserialization}
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\textcolor{darkorange}{\bf \centering This is the {\it actual} performance (last summer, in Uproot itself).}

\mbox{ } \hfill \includegraphics[width=0.9\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkwardforth-in-uproot-performance.pdf} \hfill \mbox{ }
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Scaling: AwkwardForth releases the Python GIL}
\vspace{0.25 cm}
\textcolor{darkorange}{\bf \centering This is the {\it predicted} performance (2 years ago, in proof-of-concept demo).}

\begin{columns}
\column{0.5\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/Python-scaling.pdf}

\column{0.5\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PLOTS/AwkwardForth-scaling.pdf}
\end{columns}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{Scaling: AwkwardForth releases the Python GIL}
\vspace{0.5 cm}
\textcolor{darkorange}{\bf \centering This is the {\it actual} performance (last summer, in Uproot itself).}

\vspace{-0.25 cm}
\mbox{\hspace{-1 cm}} \includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkwardforth-in-uproot-jagged3-scaling.pdf}

\vspace{-4 cm}
\hfill \includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{PLOTS/awkwardforth-in-uproot-jagged3-scaling-reasons.pdf} \mbox{\hspace{-1.5 cm}}
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}[fragile]{What if we compile it anyway?}
\vspace{0.5 cm}
Some users have Numba (LLVM) installed.

\vspace{0.25 cm}
What if we convert AwkwardForth $\to$ Numba and let Numba compile it?

\vspace{0.5 cm}
\begin{uncoverenv}<2->
Proof-of-concept implementation, given this test problem:

\vspace{0.25 cm}
Compute: $(x + 1) * (x - 2) + 3$

for $N$ iterations (i.e.\ no data flow).
\end{uncoverenv}

\vspace{0.25 cm}
\uncover<3->{\fbox{\mintinline{forth}{dup 1 + swap 2 - * 3 +}}}

\vspace{0.25 cm}
\begin{uncoverenv}<4->
\scriptsize
\begin{minted}{ca65}
lea     eax, [rdi+1]
sub     edi, 2
imul    eax, edi
add     eax, 3
\end{minted}
\end{uncoverenv}

\normalsize
\vspace{0.5 cm}
\begin{uncoverenv}<5->
$\sim$400~ms to compile, then 10$\times$ faster,

but only for arithmetically intensive code.
\end{uncoverenv}

\vspace{-5.5 cm}
\uncover<6->{\hfill \includegraphics[width=0.6\linewidth]{PLOTS/new_compiler.pdf} \mbox{\hspace{-1 cm}}}

\end{frame}


\end{document}