Module profiler

Allows profiling proving and verifying of Triton VM’s STARK proofs.

The profiler is used to measure the time taken by various parts of the proving and verifying process. It can be used to identify bottlenecks and optimize the performance of the STARK proof system.

The profiler is thread-local, meaning that each thread has its own profiler. This allows multiple threads to run in parallel without interfering with each other’s profiling data.

Enabling Profiling

In Dependencies

In release builds, profiling is disabled by default to allow for the fastest possible proof generation & verification. To enable profiling, either make sure that debug_assertions is set, or add the following to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
triton-vm = { version = "x.y.z", default-features = false }

For Benchmarks

In order to enable profiling when running a benchmark, pass the flag --no-default-features to cargo bench. In case this is not working in the workspace directory, navigate to the crate’s directory and run the command there.

A note on the no_profile feature design decision

The feature no_profile disables profiling, and is enabled by default. This seems backwards. However, it is an expression of how Triton VM favors performance over profiling. Note how Cargo resolves dependencies: if some dependency is transitively declared multiple times, the union of all features will be enabled.

Imagine some dependency foo enables a hypothetical do_profile feature. If another dependency bar requires the most efficient proof generation, it would be slowed down by foo and could do nothing about it. Instead, Disabling profiling by enabling the feature no_profile allows bar to dictate. This:

1. makes the profile reports of foo disappear, which is sad, but
2. lets bar be fast, which is more important for Triton VM.

Structs

• VMPerformanceProfile

Functions

• finish
  Stop the current profiling session and generate a VMPerformanceProfile. If the profiler is disabled or not running, an empty VMPerformanceProfile is returned.
• start
  Start profiling. If the profiler is already running, this function cancels the current profiling session and starts a new one.