7 ms·

I thought Shopify wanted to migrate to TruffleRuby which would likely give them at least a 2x speedup?

by acchow 4y ago

JohnBooty 4y ago
Tragically, one of the principals behind TruffleRuby (and researcher at Shopify) was Chris Eaton and he passed away a few months ago. I'm not sure where this leaves TruffleRuby itself, or plans to implement it at Shopify. (Rest in peace, Chris, and may your memory be a blessing to those who knew you)
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Oh, yikes, I didn't realize this. Felt like I had seen him around on the site just yesterday :(
- the-alchemist 4y ago
  so sad, I had no idea. We lost a brilliant mind...
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  Looks like it’s still a WIP https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commits?author=eregon https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commits?author=eregon
  - cutler 4y ago
    With due respect to the tireless efforts of the TruffleRuby team TruffleRuby always seemed fated to be forever almost ready. I first came across it in 2013, I think it was, but there was always a not-quite-ready factor. If I remember the show-stopper was that it was unlikely to ever be Rails compatible but I may be wrong.
    - chucke 4y ago
      https://ruby.social/@eregon/109280839376585363 https://ruby.social/@eregon/109280839376585363 Tl;Dr it runs rails for a while already, it even runs mastodon.
- jacques_chester 4y ago
  There are still folks working on TruffleRuby at Shopify.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  Chris Seaton
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Thank you.
- esprehn 4y ago
  You have his name slightly wrong, it was Chris Seaton. Here was the announcement: https://twitter.com/flavorjones/status/1600436490885947393 https://twitter.com/flavorjones/status/1600436490885947393
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    thank you for the correction! typing with a hand injury today :-/
the-alchemist 4y ago
I don't quite understand the YJIT excitement. A few benchmarks show that TruffleRuby generally beats YJIT, sometimes by a 10x margin. [0]: https://eregon.me/blog/2022/01/06/benchmarking-cruby-mjit-yjit-jruby-truffleruby.html https://eregon.me/blog/2022/01/06/benchmarking-cruby-mjit-yj... says
- kenhwang 4y ago
  And by many accounts Oracle makes the fastest database yet everyone still uses Postgres. Also our experience with truffleruby is death by a thousand subtle differences. It might be 97% compatible but chasing down that 3% undocumented behavior difference on every minor version update for every gem got exhausting fast. Everyone uses and tests against cruby.
  - v3ss0n 4y ago
    What? When was oracle free or opensource?
    - merb 4y ago
      and when was oracle the fastest database? You are not allowed to even publish that metric....
      - Spivak 4y ago
        I do have some sympathy for companies who don’t want to have to deal with a constant barrage of benchmarks that are egregiously wrong. HN has been host to quite a few of these spats over the years and I wouldn’t want to deal with it, there are pretty much only downsides to letting people poorly benchmark your product and have every incentive to get it wrong.
        merb 4y ago
        well to be fair, most benchmarks are of course not comparable with the real world. People should always use what works best for them.
xfalcox 4y ago
You can enable YJIT and get a ~30% speedup by passing an extra environment variable to your Docker container. Moving away from CRuby to an alternative Ruby is a lot harder than that. Also Oracle.
- brigandish 4y ago
  > Moving away from CRuby to an alternative Ruby is a lot harder than that. In what way? Truffleruby passes over 97% of CRuby's specs and it runs on my command-line without any problems so far. It was easy to install too. I'm sure if I dig into those failing specs I'll find something but will it be important? I'd love to know.
  - ironick09 4y ago
    It’s probably not hard for someone to run the interpreter and try a few things out - but large private code bases are where the struggles would begin I imagine.
    - brigandish 4y ago
      Sure, but the Devil's in the detail, especially when there's nothing obvious.
  - ewalk153 4y ago
    From the Truffleruby repo [1]: > Regarding performance, TruffleRuby is by far the fastest Ruby implementation on the yjit-bench benchmark suite which includes railsbench, etc. To achieve this performance TruffleRuby needs a fair amount of warmup, as other advanced JIT compilers do. If you find any performance issue, please see this guide. One benefit of YJIT + cruby is it doesn't have the same warmup costs. If you're deploying many times a day, this JIT warmup becomes a dominant factor. [1] https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby
- semiquaver 4y ago
  > Also Oracle Very little of Graal/Truffle is locked behind an oracle license. The community edition is FOSS and within 5-10% of the performance of the paid version (so still an order of magnitude above MRI with or without YJIT). The situation is very similar to HotSpot/OpenJDK. https://www.graalvm.org/community/opensource/ https://www.graalvm.org/community/opensource/
jacques_chester 4y ago
Shopify invests in both. Source: I work in a team that's nearby as the org chart flies.
chucke 4y ago
The core team is split across oracle and shopify. They are still actively interested in it, even for research purposes.

I thought Shopify wanted to migrate to TruffleRuby which would likely give them at least a 2x speedup?

by acchow 4y ago

I thought Shopify wanted to migrate to TruffleRuby which would likely give them at least a 2x speedup?

Tragically, one of the principals behind TruffleRuby (and researcher at Shopify) was Chris Eaton and he passed away a few months ago. I'm not sure where this leaves TruffleRuby itself, or plans to implement it at Shopify. (Rest in peace, Chris, and may your memory be a blessing to those who knew you)

saagarjha 4y ago
Oh, yikes, I didn't realize this. Felt like I had seen him around on the site just yesterday :(
the-alchemist 4y ago
so sad, I had no idea. We lost a brilliant mind...
eddsh1994 4y ago
Looks like it’s still a WIP https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commits?author=eregon https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/commits?author=eregon
- cutler 4y ago
  With due respect to the tireless efforts of the TruffleRuby team TruffleRuby always seemed fated to be forever almost ready. I first came across it in 2013, I think it was, but there was always a not-quite-ready factor. If I remember the show-stopper was that it was unlikely to ever be Rails compatible but I may be wrong.
  - chucke 4y ago
    https://ruby.social/@eregon/109280839376585363 https://ruby.social/@eregon/109280839376585363 Tl;Dr it runs rails for a while already, it even runs mastodon.
jacques_chester 4y ago
There are still folks working on TruffleRuby at Shopify.
mirekrusin 4y ago
Chris Seaton
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Thank you.
esprehn 4y ago
You have his name slightly wrong, it was Chris Seaton. Here was the announcement: https://twitter.com/flavorjones/status/1600436490885947393 https://twitter.com/flavorjones/status/1600436490885947393
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  thank you for the correction! typing with a hand injury today :-/

the-alchemist 4y ago

I don't quite understand the YJIT excitement. A few benchmarks show that TruffleRuby generally beats YJIT, sometimes by a 10x margin. [0]: https://eregon.me/blog/2022/01/06/benchmarking-cruby-mjit-yjit-jruby-truffleruby.html https://eregon.me/blog/2022/01/06/benchmarking-cruby-mjit-yj... says

kenhwang 4y ago
And by many accounts Oracle makes the fastest database yet everyone still uses Postgres. Also our experience with truffleruby is death by a thousand subtle differences. It might be 97% compatible but chasing down that 3% undocumented behavior difference on every minor version update for every gem got exhausting fast. Everyone uses and tests against cruby.
- v3ss0n 4y ago
  What? When was oracle free or opensource?
  - merb 4y ago
    and when was oracle the fastest database? You are not allowed to even publish that metric....
    - Spivak 4y ago
      I do have some sympathy for companies who don’t want to have to deal with a constant barrage of benchmarks that are egregiously wrong. HN has been host to quite a few of these spats over the years and I wouldn’t want to deal with it, there are pretty much only downsides to letting people poorly benchmark your product and have every incentive to get it wrong.
      - merb 4y ago
        well to be fair, most benchmarks are of course not comparable with the real world. People should always use what works best for them.

xfalcox 4y ago

You can enable YJIT and get a ~30% speedup by passing an extra environment variable to your Docker container. Moving away from CRuby to an alternative Ruby is a lot harder than that. Also Oracle.

brigandish 4y ago
> Moving away from CRuby to an alternative Ruby is a lot harder than that. In what way? Truffleruby passes over 97% of CRuby's specs and it runs on my command-line without any problems so far. It was easy to install too. I'm sure if I dig into those failing specs I'll find something but will it be important? I'd love to know.
- ironick09 4y ago
  It’s probably not hard for someone to run the interpreter and try a few things out - but large private code bases are where the struggles would begin I imagine.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    Sure, but the Devil's in the detail, especially when there's nothing obvious.
- ewalk153 4y ago
  From the Truffleruby repo [1]: > Regarding performance, TruffleRuby is by far the fastest Ruby implementation on the yjit-bench benchmark suite which includes railsbench, etc. To achieve this performance TruffleRuby needs a fair amount of warmup, as other advanced JIT compilers do. If you find any performance issue, please see this guide. One benefit of YJIT + cruby is it doesn't have the same warmup costs. If you're deploying many times a day, this JIT warmup becomes a dominant factor. [1] https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby
semiquaver 4y ago
> Also Oracle Very little of Graal/Truffle is locked behind an oracle license. The community edition is FOSS and within 5-10% of the performance of the paid version (so still an order of magnitude above MRI with or without YJIT). The situation is very similar to HotSpot/OpenJDK. https://www.graalvm.org/community/opensource/ https://www.graalvm.org/community/opensource/

jacques_chester 4y ago

Shopify invests in both. Source: I work in a team that's nearby as the org chart flies.

chucke 4y ago

The core team is split across oracle and shopify. They are still actively interested in it, even for research purposes.