Re: Ideas for faster math in lua

["Wesley Smith" <wesley.hoke@...>]

I use Vec3 and Quat types from the stack.  My Lua/C++ bindings take
and return tables.  I do this because many libraries dealing with
graphics (OpenGL etc.) take tables as arguments and I want to be able
to pass a Vec3 into functions like gl.Vertex() without a conversion
from a udata.  Here's a typical function:


static int sub(lua_State *L)
	{
		if(is_vec3(L, 1) && is_vec3(L, 2))
		{
			Self v1(L, 1);
			Self v2(L, 2);
			Self v3;
			
			Base::sub(v3, v1, v2);
			to_table(L, v3);
		}
		else {
			error("Vec3.sub invalid arguments");
			lua_pushnil(L);
		}
		
		return 1;
	}

where is_vec3 is

static bool is_vec3(lua_State *L, int idx)
	{
		return lua_istable(L, idx);
	}

and to_table uses rawseti and sets a vec3 metatable on the table for
operator metamethods like __add.

wes

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Niklas Frykholm <niklas@grin.se> wrote:
> I would like to be able to process lots of small mathematical objects
>  (vector3 and quaternions) in a resource constrained environment
>  (computer game), without having to pay the cost of new-ing and garbage
>  collecting them. I.e. I would just like to reuse a pool of existing objects.
>
>  I have some ideas on how to do this, but none that I'm really satisfied
>  with.
>
>  I should mention first that we are talking about lots of small
>  computations, rather than a few big ones, so a numarray solution or
>  something similar won't work. And it doesn't have to be implemented in
>  standard Lua, patching the source is fine.
>
>  So here are some ideas:
>
>  (1) Extending the Value union to have vector3 and quaternion as basic
>  lua types
>
>  This would give them the same performance characteristics as floats
>  (which don't have to be new:ed). However it would more than double
>  the memory used by Lua, which I think is unacceptable in my constrained
>  environment.
>
>  (2) "Manually" reusing vector3s and quaternions
>
>  This means pushing vector3s that we are done with to some _cache = {},
>  and fetching new vector3s from the _cache instead of creating them.
>  Essentially it means doing manual memory management in Lua.
>
>  There are some ways of sugar coating it, saying that some function
>  returns temporary values, that you need to save if you don't want them
>  to be reused... etc. But it is hard to get away from the fact that we're
>  doing manual memory management in a garbage collected language. A simple
>  line such as:
>
>         self.y = self.y - self.x * dot_product(self.x, self.y)
>         self.y = self.y:normalized()
>
>  Becomes a lot more complicated when you have to start to think of which
>  objects you need to "save" and "free" and when to do it. It is error
>  prone and ugly.
>
>  (3) Adding limited reference counting to lua
>
>  This would mean modifying a reference counter whenever a TValue is
>  created/copied or destroyed in Lua, such as when the stack size is
>  changed, etc.
>
>  The reference counter does not have to be perfect... it's ok for it to
>  overestimate the number of references, it just has to make sure that it
>  never underestimates them. Overestimating references just means that the
>  object will be cleaned up by garbage collection instead of being
>  recycled while underestimating will give bugs.
>
>  Still... a lot of lua functions will have to be patched to do reference
>  counting. It is a lot of work, easy to miss something and create bugs.
>
>
>  Three different ideas... none is really satisfying. Has anyone tried to
>  do something similar? What approach did you use? How well did it work?
>
>  // Niklas
>
>