[dart2js] Optimize Flutter .runtimeType patterns

[rakudrama]

b328cadaacb12fac16a1b173c48f53ac1ba1352d Added a benchmark for the canUpdate hot method:

  static bool canUpdate(Widget oldWidget, Widget newWidget) {
    return oldWidget.runtimeType == newWidget.runtimeType &&
        oldWidget.key == newWidget.key;
  }

While the new Rti is quite a bit faster that the old rti, and faster than Dart JIT VM, the benchmark on dart2js on V8 still lags AOT VM by 3-4x.

The Type instance is cached on the _Rti object.

There are several things we can do:

• Make use of the context's interceptor rather than do the type dispatch again. This change is a first cut at this - defining slightly different runtimeType getters for intercepted types, closures, arrays and regular Dart objects.
• The canUpdate code uses a one-shot interceptor, but only because the parameter type is nullable.
  • Specializing the interceptor on the call site receiver type would speed up the interceptor dispatch.
  • However, with strong NNBD checking, null becomes impossible.

There are many == methods with the following pattern:

class ValueKey<T> extends LocalKey {
  const ValueKey(this.value);
  final T value;
  @override
  bool operator ==(Object other) {
    if (other.runtimeType != runtimeType) return false;
    return other is ValueKey<T> && other.value == value;
  }

class CircleBorder extends ShapeBorder {
  ...
  @override
  bool operator ==(Object other) {
    if (other.runtimeType != runtimeType)
      return false;
    return other is CircleBorder
        && other.side == side;
  }

• runtimeType is implicit this.runtimeType.
• The class is often not generic.
• The 'is' test is redundant with the runtimeType test.

Ideas:

• If no subclass of the class declaring == has type parameters, and no class overrides runtimeType, other.runtimeType != this.runtimeType can be reduced to JavaScript other.constructor !== this.constructor.
• other can be refined similar to an is-test: other is known to to be a subtype of the declaring class, which often will allow the following 'is'-test to be eliminated.
• Even with a class hierarchy, the valid receiver type might be constrained to be exact (e.g. the method is shadowed in all live subclasses and not called via a super-call).
• If the declaring class is a non-generic leaf in the instantiated classes hierarchy, other.runtimeType == this.runtimeType is equivalent to an is-test, e.g. other is CircleBorder.

The classes that override get:runtimeType are an impediment to the above ideas, especially for the argument other of == which could be anything.

[mraleph]

Note that we have a special optimization for x.runtimeType == y.runtimeType - implemented in f4ec20abac2286604565e9d5a6d1d744849c964d

[rakudrama]

@mraleph Thanks for the reference to the VM optimization. I notice in the new RuntimeType benchmarks that AOT is 7x faster than VM. What extra is AOT doing?

[mraleph]

The runtimeType optimization above is AOT only, I never ported it to JIT

[mraleph]

For JIT we only have:

• intrinsics for fast runtimeType if object is an instance of a non-parameterized type
• intrinsics for fast comparison of type objects
• constant evaluation of runtimeType if receiver type is known at compile time (e.g. due to type feedback based specialization).