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Using TruffleRuby with the SVM

The Substrate Virtual Machine, or SVM, is a closed- and whole-world analysis ahead-of-time compiler for Java, and an implementation of parts of a JVM.

Using the SVM it is possible to ahead-of-time compile TruffleRuby and the Graal dynamic compiler to a single, statically linked native binary executable, that has no dependency on a JVM, and does not link to any JVM libraries. The technique is more sophisticated than just appending a JAR as a resource in a copy of the JVM - only parts of the JVM which are needed are included and they are specialised for how TruffleRuby uses them. There is no Java bytecode - only compiled native machine code and compiler graphs for dynamic compilation.

Note that a common confusion is that the SVM is an ahead-of-time compiler for the Java code that implements the TruffleRuby interpreter and the Graal compiler, not an ahead-of-time compiler for your Ruby program.

The SVM itself, like Graal and TruffleRuby, is implemented in Java.

https://youtu.be/FJY96_6Y3a4?t=10023

More information can be found in Kevin's blog post.

To use the SVM you need a release of GraalVM, as described in Using GraalVM.

Starting with GraalVM 0.28, GraalVM contains a native binary that implements Ruby, similar to the MRI or Rubinius executables. This binary is subject to the same OTN licence as the GraalVM distribution.

The binary doesn't need a JVM:

$ cd graalvm
$ otool -L jre/bin/ruby
jre/bin/ruby:
	/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation (compatibility version 150.0.0, current version 1348.28.0)
	/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1238.0.0)
	/usr/lib/libz.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.2.8)

$ du -h jre/bin/ruby
111M	jre/bin/ruby

The SVM version of TruffleRuby has better startup performance and lower memory footprint than TruffleRuby or JRuby on the JVM, and better startup performance than Rubinius. We expect these numbers to improve significantly in the future as we ahead-of-time compile more of the Ruby startup process, and aim to meet or beat MRI's startup time.

Implementation Real Time (s) Max RSS (MB)
TruffleRuby SVM 0.10 97
TruffleRuby JVM 2.86 272
JRuby 9.1.13.0 1.44 154
MRI 2.4.2 0.03 8
Rubinius 3.84 0.25 65

Run on Linux with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4702HQ CPU @ 2.20GHz.

$ export TIME="%e %M"

$ cd graalvm-0.28
$ /usr/bin/time bin/ruby --native -e 'puts "Hello"'  # TruffleRuby on the SVM
Hello
0.10 99764

$ /usr/bin/time bin/ruby --jvm -e 'puts "Hello"'  # TruffleRuby on the JVM
Hello
2.86 278240

$ chruby jruby-9.1.13.0
$ /usr/bin/time jruby -e 'puts "Hello"'
Hello
1.44 158080

$ chruby ruby-2.4.2
$ /usr/bin/time ruby -e 'puts "Hello"'
Hello
0.03 8672

$ chruby rbx-3.84
$ /usr/bin/time rbx -e 'puts "Hello"'
Hello
0.25 66824

(The first number real is the number of actual seconds which have elapsed while the command runs, and the second maximum resident set size is the maximum amount of memory occupied while the command runs)