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Hyperfine: A command-line benchmarking tool
- mmastrac 2y agoHyperfine is a great tool but when I was using it at Deno to benchmark startup time there was a lot of weirdness around the operating system apparently caching inodes of executables. If you are looking at shaving sub 20ms numbers, be aware you may need to pull tricks on macos especially to get real numbers.
- JackYoustra 2y agoI've found pretty good results with the System Trace template in xcode instruments. You can also stack instruments, for example combining the file inspector with a virtual memory inspector. I've run into some memory corruption with it sometimes, though, so be wary of that. Emerge tools has an alternative for iOS at least, maybe one day they'll port it to mac.
- art049 2y agoI never tried xcode instruments. Is the UX good for this kind of tool?
- JackYoustra 2y agoSystem trace is pretty comprehensive, as long as it's something in there and you don't need a crazy strong profiler and are okay with occasional hangs in the profiler UI, it's pretty good
- sharkdp 2y agoCaching is something that you almost always have to be aware of when benchmarking command line applications, even if the application itself has no caching behavior. Please see https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine?tab=readme-ov-file#warmup-runs-and-preparation-commands https://github.com/sharkdp/hyperfine?tab=readme-ov-file#warm... on how to run either warm-cache benchmarks or cold-cache benchmarks.
- mmastrac 2y agoI'm fully aware but it's not a problem that warmup runs fix. An executable freshly compiled will always benchmark differently than one that has "cooled off" on macos, regardless of warmup runs. I've tried to understand what the issue is (played with resigning executables etc) but it's literally something about the inode of the executable itself. Most likely part of the OSX security system.
- renewiltord 2y agoInteresting. I've encountered this obviously on first run (because of the security checking it does on novel executables) but didn't realize this expired. Probably because I usually attribute it to a recompilation. Thanks.
- maccard 2y agoNot being able to rely on numbers to 20ms is pretty poor. That’s longer than a frame in a video game. Windows has microsecond precision counters (see QueryPerformanceCounter and friends)
- 7e 2y agoWhat database product does the community commonly send benchmark results to? This tool is great, but I'd love to analyze results relationally.
- forrestthewoods 2y agoHyperfine is hyper frustrating because it only works with really really fine microsecond level benchmarks. Once you get into the millisecond range it’s worthless.
- anotherhue 2y agoIt spawns a new process each time right? I would think that would but a cap on how accurate it can get. For my purposes I use it all the time though, quick and easy sanity-check.
- forrestthewoods 2y agoThe issue is it runs a kajillion tests to try and be “statistical”. But there’s no good way to say “just run it for 5 seconds and give me the best answer you can”. It’s very much designed for nanosecond to low microsecond benchmarks. Trying to fight this is trying to smash a square peg through a round hole.
- gforce_de 2y agoAt least it gives some numbers and point in a direction: $ hyperfine --warmup 3 './hello-world-bin-sh.sh' './hello-world-env-python3.py' Benchmark 1: ./hello-world-bin-sh.sh Time (mean ± σ): 1.3 ms ± 0.4 ms [User: 1.0 ms, System: 0.5 ms] ... Benchmark 2: ./hello-world-env-python3.py Time (mean ± σ): 43.1 ms ± 1.4 ms [User: 33.6 ms, System: 8.4 ms] ...
- PhilipRoman 2y agoI disagree that it is designed for nano/micro benchmarks. If you want that level of detail, you need to stay within a single process, pinned to a core which is isolated from scheduler. At least I found it almost impossible to benchmark assembly routines with it.
- sharkdp 2y ago> The issue is it runs a kajillion tests to try and be “statistical”. If you see any reason for putting “statistical” in quotes, please let us know. hyperfine does not run a lot of tests, but it does try to find outliers in your measurements. This is really valuable in some cases. For example: we can detect when the first run of your program takes much longer than the rest of the runs. We can then show you a warning to let you know that you probably want to either use some warmup runs, or a "--prepare" command to clean (OS) caches if you want a cold-cache benchmark. > But there’s no good way to say “just run it for 5 seconds and give me the best answer you can”. What is the "best answer you can"? > It’s very much designed for nanosecond to low microsecond benchmarks. Absolutely not. With hyperfine, you can not measure execution times in the "low microsecond" range, let alone nanosecond range. See also my other comment.
- usrme 2y agoI've also had a good experience using the 'perf'[^1] tools for when I don't want to install 'hyperfine'. Shameless plug for a small blog post about it as I don't think it is that well known: https://usrme.xyz/tils/perf-is-more-robust-for-repeated-timings-than-time/ https://usrme.xyz/tils/perf-is-more-robust-for-repeated-timi.... --- [^1]: https://www.mankier.com/1/perf https://www.mankier.com/1/perf
- vdm 2y agoI too have scripted time(1) in a loop badly. perf stat is more likely to be already installed than hyperfine. Thank you for sharing!
- CathalMullan 2y agoThere's also 'poop', which is a nice middle-ground between 'hyperfine' and 'perf'. https://github.com/andrewrk/poop https://github.com/andrewrk/poop
- llimllib 2y agoworth mentioning that it's linux-only
- mosselman 2y agoHyperfine is great. I use it sometimes for some quick web page benchmarks: https://abuisman.com/posts/developer-tools/quick-page-benchmarks https://abuisman.com/posts/developer-tools/quick-page-benchm... As mentioned here in the thread, when you want to go into the single ms optimisations it is not the best approach since there is a lot of overhead especially the way I demonstrate here, but it works very well for some sanity checks.
- llimllib 2y agoI find k6 a lot nicer for HTTP benching, and no slower to set up than hyperfine (which I love for CLI benching): https://k6.io/ https://k6.io/
- Sesse__ 2y ago> Hyperfine is great. Is it, though? What I would expect a system like this to have, at a minimum: * Robust statistics with p-values (not just min/max, compensation for multiple hypotheses, no Gaussian assumptions) * Multiple stopping points depending on said statistics. * Automatic isolation to the greatest extent possible (given appropriate permissions) * Interleaved execution, in case something external changes mid-way. I don't see any of this in hyperfine. It just… runs things N times and then does a naïve average/min/max? At that rate, one could just as well use a shell script and eyeball the results.
- bee_rider 2y agoWhat do you suggest? Those sound like great features.
- shawndavidson7 2y ago[dead]
- edwardzcn 2y agoHyperfine is great! I remember I learned about it when comparing functions with/without tail recursion (not sure if it was from the Go reference or the Rust reference). It provides simple configurations for unit test. But I have not tried it on DBMS (e.g. like sysbench). Does anyone have a try?
- smartmic 2y agoA capable alternative based on "boring, old" technology is multitime [1] Back at the time I needed it, it had peak memory usage - hyperfine was not able to show it. Maybe this had changed by now. [1] https://tratt.net/laurie/src/multitime/ https://tratt.net/laurie/src/multitime/
- accelbred 2y agoHyperfine is a really useful tool. Weirdest thing I've used it for is comparing io throughput on various disks.
- ratrocket 2y agoPerhaps interesting (for some) to note that hyperfine is from the same author as at least a few other "ne{w,xt} generation" command line tools (that could maybe be seen as part of "rewrite it in Rust", but I don't want to paint the author with a brush they disagree with!!): fd (find alternative; https://github.com/sharkdp/fd https://github.com/sharkdp/fd), bat ("supercharged version of the cat command"; https://github.com/sharkdp/bat https://github.com/sharkdp/bat), and hexyl (hex viewer; https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl). (And certainly others I've missed!) Pointing this out because I myself appreciate comments that do this. For myself, `fd` is the one most incorporated into my own "toolbox" -- used it this morning prior to seeing this thread on hyperfine! So, thanks for all that, sharkdp if you're reading! Ok, end OT-ness.
- varenc 2y ago++ to `fd` It’s absolutely my preferred `find` replacement. Its CLI interface just clicks for me and I can quickly express my desires. Quite unlike `find`. `fd` is one of the first packages I install on a new system.
- ratrocket 2y agoThe "funny" thing for me about `fd` is that the set of operations I use for `find` are very hard-wired into my muscle memory from using it for 20+ years, so when I reach for `fd` I often have to reference the man page! I'm getting a little better from more exposure, but it's just different enough from `find` to create a bit of an uncanny valley effect (I think that's the right use of the term...). Even with that I reach for `fd` for some of its quality-of-life features: respecting .gitignore, its speed, regex-ability. (Though not its choices with color; I am a pretty staunch "--color never" person, for better or worse!) Anyway, that actually points to another good thing about sharkdp's tools: they have good man pages!!
- n8henrie 2y agoSame here -- I like `fd` for quick stuff, but routinely have to fall back to `find`.
- jamietheriveter 2y agoThe comment about statistics that I wanted to reply to has disappeared. That commenter said: > I stand firm in my belief that unless you can prove how CLT applies to your input distributions, you should not assume normality. And if you don't know what you are doing, stop reporting means. I agree. My research group stopped using Hyperfine because it ranks benchmarked commands by mean, and provides standard deviation as a substitute for a confidence measure. These are not appropriate for heavy-tailed, skewed, and otherwise non-normal distributions. It's easy to demonstrate that most empirical runtime distributions are not normal. I wrote BestGuess [0] because we needed a better benchmarking tool. Its analysis provides measures of skew, kurtosis, and Anderson-Darling distance from normal, so that you can see how normal or not is your distribution. It ranks benchmark results using non-parametric methods. And, unlike many tools, it saves all of the raw data, making it easy to re-analyze later. My team also discovered that Hyperfine's measurements are a bit off. It reports longer run times than other tools, including BestGuess. I believe this is due to the approach, which is to call getrusage(), then fork/exec the program to be measured, then call getrusage() again. The difference in user and system times is reported as the time used by the benchmarked command, but unfortunately this time also includes cycles spent in the Rust code for managing processes (after the fork but before the exec). BestGuess avoids external libraries (we can see all the relevant code), does almost nothing after the fork, and uses wait4() to get measurements. The one call to wait4() gives us what the OS measured by its own accounting for the benchmarked command. While BestGuess is still a work in progress (not yet at version 1.0), my team has started using it regularly. I plan to continue its development, and I'll write it up soon at [1]. [0] https://gitlab.com/JamieTheRiveter/bestguess https://gitlab.com/JamieTheRiveter/bestguess [1] https://jamiejennings.com https://jamiejennings.com