Why hassle with requireJS, when caching performs so well? - requirejs

If you look at cached js files that get reloaded, you can see in the network panel that it literally takes NO time at all to reload them.
Why hassle with requireJS when you basically can load 3 MB of js out of the main memory in less than 1 microsecond
Why bother?

On one hand it's all about lazy loading of modules that isn't using frequently. On the other hand it's alway good practice to build amd modules in packages for production until http 2.0 will go in masses.

looking at jquery parse times which typically take 10-100 ms, depending on the device I would conclude that when there are actually many libraries, it is worth the hassle.
Probably in future, this need will degrade though (top end devices like iphone 5 have 10 ms parse time.)

Related

Nodejs | Chrome Memory Debugging

Context:
I have an Node.js application which memory seems to very high, I don't know if that is memory leak or not, because it is reduced after certain period time, but some times on heavy load it keeps on increasing takes much longer to get reduced.
So going through the articles and couple of videos, i figured that i have to heap snapshot and analyse what is causing the memory leak.
Steps:
I have taken 4 snap shots as of now in my local to reproduce the memory leak.
Snapshot 1: 800MB
Snapshot 2: 1400MB
Snapshot 3: 1600MB
Snapshot 4: 2000+MB
When i uploaded the heapdump files to chrome dev tools I see there a lot of information but i don't know how to proceed from there.
Please check below screenshot, it says there is constructor [array] which has 687206 as shallow Size & Retained Size is 721414 in the columns, so when expanded that constructor i can see there are 4097716 constructors created ( refer the second screenshot attached below ).
Question
What does internal array [] means ? Why is there 4097716 created ?
How can a filter out the constructor which created by my app and showing me that instead of some system/v8 engine constructor ?
In the same screenshot one of the constructor uses global variable called tenantRequire function, this is custom global function which is being used internally in some places instead of normal Node.js require, I see the variable across all the constructor like "Array", "Object". This is that global tenantRequire code for reference. It is just patched require function with trycatch. Is this causing the memory leak somehow ?
Refer screenshot 3, [string] constructor it has 270303848 as shallow size. When i expanded it shows modules loaded by Node.js. Question why is this taking that much size ? & Why is my lodash modules are repeated in that string constructor ?
Without knowing much about your app and the actions that cause the high memory usage, it's hard to tell what could be the issue. Which tool did you use to record the heap snapshot? What is the sequence of operations you did when you recorded the snapshot? Could you add this information to your question?
A couple of remarks
You tagged the question with node.js and showed Chrome DevTools. That's ok. You can totally take a heap snapshot of a Node.js application and analyze it in Chrome DevTools. But since both Node.js and Chrome use the same JS engine (V8) and the same garbage collector (Orinoco), it might be a bit confusing for someone who reads the question. Just to make sure I understand it correctly: the issue is in a Node.js app, not in a browser app. And you are using Chrome just to analyze the heap snapshot. Right?
Also, you wrote that you took the snapshots to reproduce the memory leak. That's not correct. You performed some action which you thought would cause a high memory usage, recorded a heap snapshot, and later loaded the snapshot in Chrome DevTools to observe the supposed memory leak.
Trace first, profile second
Every time you suspect a performance issue, you should first use tracing to understand which functions in your applications are problematic (i.e. slow, create a lot of objects that have to be garbage-collected, etc).
Then, when you know which functions to focus on, you can profile them.
Try these visual tools
There are a few tools that can help you with tracing/profiling your app. Have a look a FlameScope (a web app) and node-clinic (a suite of tools). There is also Perfetto, but I think it's for Chrome apps, not Node.js apps.
I also highly recommend the V8 blog.

Is there any JIT pre-caching support in NodeJS?

I am using a rather large and performance-intensive nodejs program to generate hinting data for CJK fonts (sfdhanautohint), and for some better dependency tracking I had to end up calling the nodejs program tens of thousands of times from a makefile like this.
This immediately brought me to the concern that doing such is actually putting a lot of overhead in starting and pre-heating the JIT engine, so I decided to find something like ngen.exe for nodejs. It appears that V8 already has some support for code caching, but is there anything I can do to use it in NodeJS?
Searching for kProduceCodeCache in NodeJS's GitHub repo doesn't return any non-bundled-v8 results. Perhaps it's time for a feature request…
Yes, this happens automatically. Node 5.7.0+ automatically pre-caches (pre-heats the JIT engine for your source) the first time you run your code (since PR #4845 / January 2016 here: https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/4845).
It's important to note you can even pre-heat the pre-heat (before your code is ever even run on a machine, you can pre-cache your code and tell Node to load it).
Andres Suarez, a Facebook developer who works on Yarn, Atom and Babel created v8-compile-cache, which is a tiny little module that will JIT your code and require()s, and save your Node cache into your $TMP folder, and then use it if it's found. Check out the source for how it's done to suit other needs.
You can, if you'd like, have a little check that runs on start, and if the machine architecture is in your set of cache files, just load the cached files instead of letting Node JIT everything. This can cut your load time in half or more for a real-world large project with tons of requires, and it can do it on the very first run
Good for speeding up containers and getting them under that 500ms "microservice" boot time.
It's important to note:
Caches are binaries; they contain machine-executable code. They aren't your original JS code.
Node cache binaries are different for each target CPU you intend to run on (IA-32, IA-64, ARM etc). If you want to pre-cache pre-caches for your users, you must make cache targets for each target architecture you want to support.
Enjoy a ridiculous speed boost :)

j2me out of memory exception

I'm making a game using J2ME and sometimes while testing it I'm getting out of memory exception, I know what it means but how can I solve it ? if I'll call System.gc() in my game loop every time will it help somehow ? Any tips on how to prevent this would be appreciated !
I see you've also asked j2me wtk find memory leak
In my experience, memory leaks don't cause OutOfMemoryExceptions. All they do is to slowly use up all the memory in the device. And when it's all nearly used up, the device is then forced to call System.gc() itself.
System.gc() is a blocking call, meaning it'll make your whole game stall for some microseconds, which of course is annoying. And this is why people go hunting for memory leaks - to prevent the automatic call to System.gc().
An OutOfMemoryException may occur if e.g. you have 1mb memory left, while trying to load a 2mb resource. And while a memory leak may dramatically increase chances of running into a situation like that, your problem is not the memory leak itself, but more likely that you're using too big resources.
Are you using mp3 files for music? Or big images for backgrounds or maps?
You could try calling System.gc() just before loading big resources, and it might reduce the problem. But the problem doesn't have to be related to your game alone. It could also matter what other apps are running on the device at the same time, and how much memory they use.
You could also try replacing mp3 music with MIDI music, if only just to test if it makes a difference. (Find JavaME optimized MIDI music at IndieGameMusic.com).
And if you do use big images, make sure you optimize them with tools like PNGout or Optipng.
If original file is not too big then no need of decreasing size,you can use jpeg instead...also you can just have specific limit to your local buffer size.and before system.gc() you can make use of Thread.sleep() for testing purpose to check the effect and to give time to Gc.also check with WTK's performance monitor to check actual pick location.

Node JS, Highcharts Memory usage keeps climbing

I am looking after an app built with Node JS that's producing some interesting issues. It was originally running on Node JS v0.3.0 and I've since upgraded to v0.10.12. We're using Node JS to render charts on the server and we've noticed the memory usage keeps climbing chart after chart.
Q1: I've been monitoring the RES column in top for the Node JS process, is this correct or should I be monitoring something else?
I've been setting variables to null to try and reallocate memory back to the system resources (I read this somewhere as a solution) and it makes only a slight difference.
I've pushed the app all the way to 1.5gb and it then ceases to function and the process doesn't appear to die. No error messages which I found odd.
Q2: Is there anything else I can do?
Thanks
Steve
That is a massive jump in versions. You may want to share what code changes you may have made to get it working on latest stable. The api is not the same as back in v0.3, so that may be part of the problem.
If not then the issue you see it more likely from heap fragmentation than from an actual leak. In later v8 versions garbage collection is more liberal with cleanup to improve performance. (see http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=112386 for some discussion on this)
You may try running the application with --max_old_space_size=32 which will limit the amount of memory v8 can use to around 32MB. Note the docs say "max size of the old generation", so it won't be exactly 32MB. Just around it, for lack of a better technical explanation.
Also you can track the amount of external memory usage with --trace_external_memory. This will allow you to know if external memory (i.e. Buffers) are being retained in your application.
You're note on the application hanging around 1.5GB would tell me you're probably on a 64-bit system. You only mentioned it ceases to function, but didn't note if the CPU is spinning during that time. Also since I don't have example code I'm not sure of what might be causing this to happen.
I'd try running on latest development (v0.11.3 at the time of this writing) and see if the issue is fixed. A lot of performance/memory enhancements are being worked on that may help your issue.
I guess you have somewhere a memory leak (in form of a closure?) that keeps the (not longer used?) diagrams(?) somewhere in memory.
The v8 sometimes needs a bit tweaking when it comes to > 1 GB of memory. Try out --noincremental_marking and/or --max_old_space_size=81920000 (if you have 8 GB available).
Check for more options with node --v8-options and go through the --trace*-parameters to find out what slows down/stops node.

JavaME - LWUIT images eat up all the memory

I'm writing a MIDlet using LWUIT and images seem to eat up incredible amounts of memory. All the images I use are PNGs and are packed inside the JAR file. I load them using the standard Image.createImage(URL) method. The application has a number of forms and each has a couple of labels an buttons, however I am fairly certain that only the active form is kept in memory (I know it isn't very trustworthy, but Runtime.freeMemory() seems to confirm this).
The application has worked well in 240x320 resolution, but moving it to 480x640 and using appropriately larger images for UI started causing out of memory errors to show up. What the application does, among other things, is download remote images. The application seems to work fine until it gets to this point. After downloading a couple of PNGs and returning to the main menu, the out of memory error is encountered. Naturally, I looked into the amount of memory the main menu uses and it was pretty shocking. It's just two labels with images and four buttons. Each button has three images used for style.setIcon, setPressedIcon and setRolloverIcon. Images range in size from 15 to 25KB but removing two of the three images used for every button (so 8 images in total), Runtime.freeMemory() showed a stunning 1MB decrease in memory usage.
The way I see it, I either have a whole lot of memory leaks (which I don't think I do, but memory leaks aren't exactly known to be easily tracked down), I am doing something terribly wrong with image handling or there's really no problem involved and I just need to scale down.
If anyone has any insight to offer, I would greatly appreciate it.
Mobile devices are usually very low on memory. So you have to use some tricks to conserve and use memory.
We had the same problem at a project of ours and we solved it like this.
for downloaded images:
Make a cache where you put your images. If you need an image, check if it is in the cachemap, if it isn't download it and put it there, if it is, use it. if memory is full, remove the oldest image in the cachemap and try again.
for other resource images:
keep them in memory only for as long as you can see them, if you can't see them, break the reference and the gc will do the cleanup for you.
Hope this helps.
There are a few things that might be happening here:
You might have seen the memory used before garbage collection, which doesn't correspond to the actual memory used by your app.
Some third party code you are running might be pooling some internal datastructures to minimize allocation. While pooling is a viable strategy, sometimes it does look like a leak. In that case, look if there is API to 'close' or 'dispose' the objects you don't need.
Finally, you might really have a leak. In this case you need to get more details on what's going on in the emulator VM (though keep in mind that it is not necessarily the same as the phone VM).
Make sure that your emulator uses JRE 1.6 as backing JVM. If you need it to use the runtime libraries from erlyer JDK, use -Xbootclasspath:<path-to-rt.jar>.
Then, after your application gets in the state you want to see, do %JAVA_HOME%\bin\jmap -dump:format=b,file=heap.bin <pid> (if you don't know the id of your process, use jps)
Now you've got a dump of the JVM heap. You can analyze it with jhat (comes with the JDK, a bit difficult to use) or some third party profilers (my preference is YourKit - it's commercial, but they have time-limited eval licenses)
I had a similar problem with LWUIT at Java DTV. Did you try flushing the images when you don't need them anymore (getAWTImage().flush())?
Use EncodedImage and resource files when possible (resource files use EncodedImage by default. Read the javadoc for such. Other comments are also correct that you need to actually observe the amount of memory, even high RAM Android/iOS devices run out of memory pretty fast with multiple images.
Avoid scaling which effectively eliminates the EncodedImage.
Did you think of the fact, that maybe loading the same image from JAR, many times, is causing many separate image objects (with identical contents) to be created instead of reusing one instance per-individual-image? This is my first guess.

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