Low effort, precise specialization in tier 2 using lookup tables, replace and replicate.

[markshannon]

The primary motivation for this is BINARY_OP, but it can apply to BINARY_SUBSCR, COMPARE_OP, and CONTAINS_OP.

The idea is that we add a single tier1 specialization that contains a table lookup. The table is const table of function pointers.
That is:

replaced op(_BINARY_OP_TABLE_LOOKUP, (index/1, left, right -- res)) {
    res = BinaryOpTable[index](left, right);
}
macro (BINARY_OP_TABLE) = _BINARY_TYPE_CHECK + _BINARY_OP_TABLE_LOOKUP;

We replace _BINARY_OP_TABLE_LOOKUP in tier 2 with

replicate(N) op(_BINARY_OP_INLINE, (left, right -- res)) {
    res = BinaryOpTable[oparg](left, right);
}

Note how _BINARY_OP_INLINE replaces index with oparg.
As oparg is a const, the C compiler will (at least it should) eliminate the table lookup.
If we declare the relevant function as inline, it will be inlined and we end up with an optimal tier 2 uop.

[Fidget-Spinner]

This will slow down tier 1 though. The last time we tried this on BINARY_SUBSCR way back, it was a wash in perf. Are you hoping that the tier 2 will take over soon enough that that doesn't matter?

[markshannon]

If we eliminate the existing specializations of BINARY_OP, specifically int and float addition and multiplication, it might slow things down. We can leave those and add BINARY_OP_TABLE for all the other cases if it gives better performance.

[markshannon]

The last time we tried this on BINARY_SUBSCR way back, it was a wash in perf. Are you hoping that the tier 2 will take over soon enough that that doesn't matter?

I don't expect this to help in tier 1. We should expect a speedup in tier 2.
So, as long as it isn't slower for tier 1, we should get an overall speedup.

[Fidget-Spinner]

If we eliminate the existing specializations of BINARY_OP, specifically int and float addition and multiplication, it might slow things down. We can leave those and add BINARY_OP_TABLE for all the other cases if it gives better performance.

Make sense to me.

[gvanrossum]

As oparg is a const, the C compiler will (at least it should) eliminate the table lookup.
If we declare the relevant function as inline, it will be inlined and we end up with an optimal tier 2 uop.

This expresses a lot of confidence in the compiler (taking a const function pointer and expanding it inline). Have you tried to see if that works experimentally?

What would _BINARY_TYPE_CHECK do?

Suppose we'd want to do this for BINARY_OP_ADD_UNICODE, what would be in the table? I guess a function that's the equivalent of _BINARY_OP_ADD_UNICODE -- but that has an ERROR_IF() call, which might be tricky (it uses goto). Assuming we solve that (or use a different example that doesn't error), would the _BINARY_TYPE_CHECK also use a table? With a different-valued index perhaps? (I'm sure we can fix two 8-bit index values in a single cache entry -- but that's still one more than BINARY_OP currently has.)