cmd/internal/gc: optimize append + write barrier

The code generated for x = append(x, v) is roughly:

	t := x
	if len(t)+1 > cap(t) {
		t = grow(t)
	}
	t[len(t)] = v
	len(t)++
	x = t

We used to generate this code as Go pseudocode during walk.
Generate it instead as actual instructions during gen.

Doing so lets us apply a few optimizations. The most important
is that when, as in the above example, the source slice and the
destination slice are the same, the code can instead do:

	t := x
	if len(t)+1 > cap(t) {
		t = grow(t)
		x = {base(t), len(t)+1, cap(t)}
	} else {
		len(x)++
	}
	t[len(t)] = v

That is, in the fast path that does not reallocate the array,
only the updated length needs to be written back to x,
not the array pointer and not the capacity. This is more like
what you'd write by hand in C. It's faster in general, since
the fast path elides two of the three stores, but it's especially
faster when the form of x is such that the base pointer write
would turn into a write barrier. No write, no barrier.

name                   old mean              new mean              delta
BinaryTree17            5.68s × (0.97,1.04)   5.81s × (0.98,1.03)   +2.35% (p=0.023)
Fannkuch11              4.41s × (0.98,1.03)   4.35s × (1.00,1.00)     ~    (p=0.090)
FmtFprintfEmpty        92.7ns × (0.91,1.16)  86.0ns × (0.94,1.11)   -7.31% (p=0.038)
FmtFprintfString        281ns × (0.96,1.08)   276ns × (0.98,1.04)     ~    (p=0.219)
FmtFprintfInt           288ns × (0.97,1.06)   274ns × (0.98,1.06)   -4.94% (p=0.002)
FmtFprintfIntInt        493ns × (0.97,1.04)   506ns × (0.99,1.01)   +2.65% (p=0.009)
FmtFprintfPrefixedInt   423ns × (0.97,1.04)   391ns × (0.99,1.01)   -7.52% (p=0.000)
FmtFprintfFloat         598ns × (0.99,1.01)   566ns × (0.99,1.01)   -5.27% (p=0.000)
FmtManyArgs            1.89µs × (0.98,1.05)  1.91µs × (0.99,1.01)     ~    (p=0.231)
GobDecode              14.8ms × (0.98,1.03)  15.3ms × (0.99,1.02)   +3.01% (p=0.000)
GobEncode              12.3ms × (0.98,1.01)  11.5ms × (0.97,1.03)   -5.93% (p=0.000)
Gzip                    656ms × (0.99,1.05)   645ms × (0.99,1.01)     ~    (p=0.055)
Gunzip                  142ms × (1.00,1.00)   142ms × (1.00,1.00)   -0.32% (p=0.034)
HTTPClientServer       91.2µs × (0.97,1.04)  90.5µs × (0.97,1.04)     ~    (p=0.468)
JSONEncode             32.6ms × (0.97,1.08)  32.0ms × (0.98,1.03)     ~    (p=0.190)
JSONDecode              114ms × (0.97,1.05)   114ms × (0.99,1.01)     ~    (p=0.887)
Mandelbrot200          6.11ms × (0.98,1.04)  6.04ms × (1.00,1.01)     ~    (p=0.167)
GoParse                6.66ms × (0.97,1.04)  6.47ms × (0.97,1.05)   -2.81% (p=0.014)
RegexpMatchEasy0_32     159ns × (0.99,1.00)   171ns × (0.93,1.07)   +7.19% (p=0.002)
RegexpMatchEasy0_1K     538ns × (1.00,1.01)   550ns × (0.98,1.01)   +2.30% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchEasy1_32     138ns × (1.00,1.00)   135ns × (0.99,1.02)   -1.60% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchEasy1_1K     869ns × (0.99,1.01)   879ns × (1.00,1.01)   +1.08% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchMedium_32    252ns × (0.99,1.01)   243ns × (1.00,1.00)   -3.71% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchMedium_1K   72.7µs × (1.00,1.00)  70.3µs × (1.00,1.00)   -3.34% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchHard_32     3.85µs × (1.00,1.00)  3.82µs × (1.00,1.01)   -0.81% (p=0.000)
RegexpMatchHard_1K      118µs × (1.00,1.00)   117µs × (1.00,1.00)   -0.56% (p=0.000)
Revcomp                 920ms × (0.97,1.07)   917ms × (0.97,1.04)     ~    (p=0.808)
Template                129ms × (0.98,1.03)   114ms × (0.99,1.01)  -12.06% (p=0.000)
TimeParse               619ns × (0.99,1.01)   622ns × (0.99,1.01)     ~    (p=0.062)
TimeFormat              661ns × (0.98,1.04)   665ns × (0.99,1.01)     ~    (p=0.524)

See next CL for combination with a similar optimization for slice.
The benchmarks that are slower in this CL are still faster overall
with the combination of the two.

Change-Id: I2a7421658091b2488c64741b4db15ab6c3b4cb7e
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/9812
Reviewed-by: David Chase <drchase@google.com>

1 files changed, 22 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/test/sliceopt.go b/test/sliceopt.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..dc30717ebf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/sliceopt.go
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+// errorcheck -0 -d=append
+
+// Copyright 2015 The Go Authors.  All rights reserved.
+// Use of this source code is governed by a BSD-style
+// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
+
+// Check optimization results for append.
+
+package main
+
+func a1(x []int, y int) []int {
+	x = append(x, y) // ERROR "append: len-only update"
+	return x
+}
+
+func a2(x []int, y int) []int {
+	return append(x, y) // ERROR "append: full update"
+}
+
+func a3(x *[]int, y int) {
+	*x = append(*x, y) // ERROR "append: len-only update"
+}