Wanting to gain some perspective on OpenFL Haxe performance, I applied some tests previously used to research Flash performance. Still primitive, I thought I’d share some preliminary results here for those interested. Future updates and additional details will be available via my blog.
Initially, I wanted to see metrics on desktop runtimes; so, the following platforms are being evaluated:
- Mac — Native Mac 64-bit assembly
- HTML5 — JavaScript target running in Chrome 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)
- Flash (Haxe) — Flash Player 15.0.0.242, executing bytecode compiled by Haxe
- Flash (AIR) — Flash Player 15.0.0.242, executing bytecode compiled by Adobe AIR SDK 15.0.0.356
- Flash Pro — Flash Player 150.0.0.242, executing bytecode compiled by Adobe Flash Pro 12.0.0.481
- Neko — Haxe Neko compiler
There are multiple comparisons that can be made. For one, performance can be compared between platforms - native Mac, HTML5, Flash, and Neko targets. Also interesting is variance within Flash runtime, comparing performance of bytecode generated by different compilers.
Tests run on a MacBook Pro running Mavericks 10.9.5, 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3. Environment:
- Haxe toolkit 3.1.3
- hxcpp: [3.1.39]
- lime: [2.0.0]
- openfl: [2.1.6]
All times in milliseconds - faster is better
Sprite instantiation test
Average time to instantiate a new Sprite, executed 1,000,000 times.
new Sprite();
Point instantiation test
Average time to instantiate a new Point, executed 1,000,000 times.
new Point();
Event dispatching
Average time to dispatch and handle an event, executed 1,000,000 times.
dispatchEvent(new Event(Event.CHANGE));
Event listener added as:
addEventListener(Event.CHANGE, callback);
function callback(event:Event):Void {
// do nothing
}
Collection push
Average time to push a string literal into a Vector and Array, executed 1,000,000 times.
v.push("Hello, World");
Vector: Strong type (blue)
Vector in Haxe defined as: var v:Array<String>
Vector in AS3 defined as: var v:Vector.<String>
Array: Dynamic Type (red)
Array in Haxe defined as: var v:Array<Dynamic>
Array in AS3 defined as: var v:Array
Vector vs array perform nearly equivalent in this test, except for Mac 64-bit native assembly, which shows overhead of dealing with dynamic types.
Type casting
Average time to cast a MovieClip to a DisplayObject, executed 1,000,000 times.
Cast: (blue)
Haxe defined as: var obj:DisplayObject = cast mc;
AS3 defined as: var obj:DisplayObject = mc as DisplayObject;
Safe cast: (red)
Haxe defined as: var obj:DisplayObject = cast (mc, DisplayObject);
AS3 defined as: var obj:DisplayObject = DisplayObject(mc);
