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Headless benchmark around the native Sponza RT scene: times setup and a measured Render() loop over the full multi-mesh atrium, prints BENCH metrics, and exits. Includes run-bench.sh and a README documenting the methodology and the measured net gain from #40 to current master. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
131 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
131 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
# SponzaBench — measuring the post-#40 performance work
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This example exists to answer issue **#155**: *starting with #40 a lot of
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performance-related issues were merged — what is the net performance gain,
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measured in a representative scene (Sponza)?*
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It is a headless benchmark harness built around the **native Vulkan**
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Sponza ray-tracing scene. Same asset bundle and camera as
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[`examples/Sponza`](../Sponza), but instead of opening an interactive
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window it times the work and prints machine-readable `BENCH …` lines, then
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exits.
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## What it measures
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* **setup** — process start through the first command submission: asset
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decompression, BLAS build per mesh group, the multi-instance TLAS, the
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RT pipeline, GPU memory placement and the descriptor writes. This is the
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window most of the post-#40 *native* perf work acts on.
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* **frames** — a warmup followed by a measured loop calling
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`Window::Render()`, reporting per-frame wall-clock stats and throughput.
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Unlike the interactive Sponza example — which is single-material on native
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because of the hit-shader dynamic-`descriptor_heap`-index driver fault
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(see `examples/Sponza/README.md`) — SponzaBench's closest-hit shades from
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barycentric coordinates and samples **no** texture, so it can build the
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**full multi-mesh atrium** (25 mesh groups, ~262 k triangles) as one
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multi-instance TLAS. The albedo is still decompressed and uploaded during
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setup (to keep that path in the measurement) but is not bound.
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## Running
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```bash
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cd examples/SponzaBench
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crafter-build # native Vulkan
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# from the produced bin dir:
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VK_LOADER_LAYERS_DISABLE='~all~' \
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CRAFTER_PRESENT_IMMEDIATE=1 \
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BENCH_WARMUP=200 BENCH_FRAMES=2000 BENCH_MESHES=25 ./SponzaBench
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```
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`run-bench.sh <bindir> <label> <meshes> <reps> [--cold]` runs it N times
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and reports the median / min / max of each metric.
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Environment knobs:
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| var | effect |
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|---|---|
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| `CRAFTER_PRESENT_IMMEDIATE=1` | uncapped present mode — without it FIFO pins frame time to the compositor's vblank (~60 Hz) and steady-state throughput can't be seen. |
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| `VK_LOADER_LAYERS_DISABLE='~all~'` | disable the validation layer. The engine enables Khronos validation **and GPU-assisted validation** unconditionally; that adds large, version-dependent overhead and must be off for a representative measurement. |
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| `BENCH_WARMUP` / `BENCH_FRAMES` | warmup and measured frame counts (default 200 / 2000). |
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| `BENCH_MESHES` | cap on mesh groups loaded (default: all 25). A small cap shrinks GPU work so per-frame **CPU** cost dominates; the full scene is GPU-traversal bound. |
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| `BENCH_CLEAN_EXIT=1` | exit via `std::exit` (runs `atexit`, which writes the #69 pipeline cache) instead of the default hard `_Exit`. Used once to seed `pipeline_cache.bin` for a warm-cache measurement. |
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## Results — #40 vs current master
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Measured on this repo's CI box: **NVIDIA RTX 4090**, driver `610.43.02`,
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1280×720, validation disabled, `IMMEDIATE` present, 200 warmup + 2000
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measured frames, **median of 9 runs**. "#40" is commit `1451e3a` (the #40
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merge); "HEAD" is current master. The *same* SponzaBench sources were
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built against each library revision (a git worktree at #40).
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### Full atrium — 25 meshes / ~262 k triangles (GPU-traversal bound)
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| metric | #40 | HEAD | Δ |
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|---|---:|---:|---:|
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| setup (cold) ms | 322.7 | 316.6 | **−1.9 %** |
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| setup (warm pipeline cache, #69) ms | 322.7¹ | 313.9 | **−2.7 %** |
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| throughput fps | 7 560 | 7 637 | **+1.0 %** |
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| frame time p50 ms | 0.1311 | 0.1298 | **−1.0 %** |
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| peak host RSS (cold) MB | 336.0 | 344.2 | +2.4 % |
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| peak host RSS (warm cache) MB | 336.0¹ | 332.0 | **−1.2 %** |
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¹ #40 predates the disk pipeline cache (#69), so its setup is always the
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cold-compile path.
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### Light scene — 1 mesh (deliberately CPU-bound)
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| metric | #40 | HEAD | Δ |
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|---|---:|---:|---:|
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| throughput fps | 15 022 | 15 237 | **+1.4 %** |
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| frame time p50 ms | 0.0662 | 0.0650 | **−1.8 %** |
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## Interpretation
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**The net measured gain in a static Sponza RT scene is small: ~1–2 %
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faster frames, ~2–3 % faster setup, and roughly flat host memory.** That is
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an honest result, and the reason is *what Sponza exercises*, not that the
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perf work was ineffective:
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* **Most post-#40 PRs don't touch this workload.** The largest block is UI
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/ text rendering (shaped-run cache, font-atlas dirty uploads, the UI
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compute-shader rewrites — #46–#57, #61, #122–#129, #132). Sponza has no
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UI, so those contribute **zero**. A second block optimises **per-frame
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dynamic uploads** (TLAS dirty-tracking #118, deforming-mesh refit #119,
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the staging ring #120). A *static* scene builds its TLAS once and never
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re-uploads, so these don't fire in steady state either. WebGPU-only
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(#130/#131/#133) and Win32-only (#134) PRs don't apply to a native
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Vulkan build at all.
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* **The PRs that *do* apply act on setup and memory, not frame time.**
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Device-local placement (#65/#72/#73/#75), staging release
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(#66/#67/#114), the pipeline cache (#69) and the deferred-deletion queue
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(#101/#116) move setup cost and peak memory — which is exactly where the
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measured ~2–3 % setup change and the warm-cache RSS drop show up. The
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pipeline cache itself saves ~3 ms here (one RT pipeline) and, more
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visibly, ~12 MB of peak RSS by skipping the cold shader-compile
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allocations.
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* **Steady-state frame time is GPU-traversal bound.** With 262 k triangles
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the per-frame CPU work (barrier scoping #48/#115, cached heap-bind
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structs #42/#43) is hidden behind GPU traversal, so it can't move the
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frame time. Shrinking the scene until it is CPU-bound (the light scene
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above) surfaces the per-frame CPU savings — and even then they are only
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~1.8 %, because that CPU path was already cheap.
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**Takeaway:** the post-#40 work is real but concentrated in UI/text and
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per-frame dynamic-upload paths; a static, UI-less RT scene is the wrong
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workload to see most of it. To quantify the UI/text gains a separate
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benchmark over a text-heavy `UIRenderer` scene (or an animated/deforming
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scene for the dynamic-upload PRs) would be needed.
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## Caveats / notes
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* The stock `examples/Sponza` **native** path does not currently compile
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against the (unpinned) Vulkan-Headers `main`: the
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`VkResourceDescriptorDataEXT` union no longer has the
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`pCombinedImageSampler` member the example uses. SponzaBench sidesteps
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this by not binding a combined image+sampler. (Pre-existing, unrelated to
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#155 — worth a follow-up to port Sponza to the split sampled-image +
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sampler-heap model the engine's own UI renderer already uses.)
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* Numbers are CPU/GPU specific. Re-run `run-bench.sh` locally for your
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hardware; the *deltas* between revisions are the point, not the absolute
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figures.
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