A single moderately complex shader. Compiled to multiple targets by the harness (same source, varying -target) to isolate generateOutput cost. ``n`` scales the amount of straight-line math the backend must emit. Scaling null: n scales op count and the emitted output is O(n); ideal codegen cost is O(n).
bucket: codegen_source · mode: target · flags: -target metal
compileInner split into phase buckets (named leaves + (self) residuals) stacked across the sweep sizes — the top edge is compileInner, so you can see which phase drives the scaling.
floor-subtracted power-law fit (t − floor) = a·Nk; floor = the minimal workload (fixed per-compile cost), k the global exponent, top-2× the local high-end doubling ratio.
| N range | floor (ms) | k (work) | fit R² | t(Nmin) | t(Nmax) | top-2× |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100–800 | 9 | 1.77 | 0.994 | 78 | 2715 | 4.00× |
compileInner grows by 2637 ms across the sweep; the mutually-exclusive phase buckets below partition that growth exactly (no nested-timer double counting). × lin is the same metric as the top-level panels, per bucket: the end point vs a linear expectation anchored to the bucket's share of the minimal floor and fitted on the low-N half — 1.0 = grew exactly linearly, >1 bends up. The super-linearity lives where × lin (and k) are red.
| bucket | t@N=100 | t@N=800 | Δ ms | share | × lin | ∝Nk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| emitEntryPointsSourceFromIR | 23 | 1298 | +1275 | 48% | 4.75× | 1.95 |
| legalizeResourceTypes | 9 | 633 | +625 | 24% | 5.64× | 2.09 |
| legalizeExistentialTypeLayout | 9 | 623 | +615 | 23% | 5.36× | 2.07 |
| SemanticChecking | 28 | 106 | +78 | 3% | 0.71× | 0.71 |
Near-constant (≤2% of growth each): generateIR (4→17 ms), specializeModule (2→17 ms), simplifyIR (2→14 ms), linkIR (1→2 ms), parseTranslationUnit (0→2 ms), performMandatoryEarlyInlining (0→1 ms), compileInner (self) (0→0 ms), performForceInlining (0→0 ms), frontEndExecute (self) (1→0 ms), unrollLoopsInModule (0→0 ms).
| N | compileInner | emitEntryPointsSourceFromIR | generateOutput |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 78 | 45 | 45 |
| 200 | 191 | 145 | 146 |
| 400 | 679 | 606 | 607 |
| 800 | 2715 | 2588 | 2589 |