Specialize ARM Thumb interface dispatch

[Eric Anderson (humanapp)]

Hey all. Here's my final compiler optimization for your consideration. I saved this one for last because it's the most gnarly, but the gains are significant. Savings scale with how dispatch-heavy the app is: how many calls there are to class methods and accessors, and additional savings for repeated calls to the same class method.

Measured impact

For programs with lots of classes and polymorphism, this optimization will provide a nice size reduction. It shrank the MicroCode hex by ~27k. Programs that are mostly global functions and arithmetic won't see such savings. Do you know what else is dispatch heavy? Arcade. Building an empty Arcade project today results in a binary.hex of 706,046 bytes. With this change: 671,486 bytes. An ~11k savings, before any user code. With all compiler optimizations active, Arcade empty project savings is 34k, and Space Rocks Revenge shrinks by a whopping 69k. It compiled small enough for Meowbit.

Summary

When MakeCode compiles a program for hardware, calls to class methods and property accessors go through an interface dispatch table (a lookup mechanism for finding the right code to run for a given object). This is a flexible, safe way to find the right override, but it is generic machinery and comes with overhead. The optimization here is to bypass that machinery for scenarios where the right code for the object can be determined more directly, resulting in leaner code.

This involves specializing three things:

1. Method calls where every caller already passes enough arguments skip an argument-adjusting step.
2. Hot dispatch sites that repeat many times share a single small helper instead of duplicating setup code at each site.
3. Property writes by a known key name and string-keyed map writes take a short, direct path instead of the fully generic one.

The mechanical pieces

1. Exact-wrapper selection -- Every iface-dispatched proc normally emits an _args wrapper that shuffles/pads arguments. A new analysis pass called markExactIfaceWrappers() checks each call site and if every one of them passes enough args, it marks the proc for useExactIfaceWrapper. Its iface-table entry then points at a 1-instruction _iface: b _nochk stub instead of the full wrapper, and the wrapper body is skipped entirely when the proc isn't also used as a value.

2. Shared dispatch thunks -- Hot field reads with call count >= 3 emit a single shared helper and bl to it, instead of repeating the dispatch setup inline at each site. Hot field reads also share a checked-load helper, threshold 5.

3. Direct field/map reads & writes -- Property writes to a statically-known field id and string-keyed map writes take a short path with C++ fallback; writes to a known field id share a thunk that bakes in the field id.

Risks

Overall risk assessment: Medium.

This touches the iface dispatch path, which has broad blast radius. The failure mode that matters is a proc whose wrapper is skipped but which is then reached by a call site that didn't pass enough arguments -> registers underfilled -> undefined behavior at runtime (not something you'd catch at compile time).

Specific risk areas, and how each is handled:

• Completeness of call counting. The selection trusts bin.ifaceCallCounts / bin.dynamicIfaceCalls to see every dispatch site. A review pass found and fixed one hole: dynamic field access on a non-class receiver (obj: any).foo constructed an iface call without flagging it dynamic. It now sets dynamicIfaceCalls, which disqualifies the wrapper-skip. If a future code path introduces another uncounted iface call site, it would reintroduce this class of bug -- this is the thing to guard when modifying the emitter's call paths.

• ABI contract. The vtable shape is untouched. The only binary-format-ish change is that empty interface tables now emit mult=0 and skip the hash section; verified safe because the thumb dispatch short-circuits on mult=0 before reading the hash table, and no C++ runtime code reads the table at a fixed offset.

• toString special-case. canUseExactIfaceWrapper explicitly excludes toString because it's also reached via a fixed vtable slot that needs the full _args wrapper. This exclusion is important for correctness -- any new fixed-slot vtable consumer must add a matching exclusion (this is documented in the code).

• Back-compat on the string-map fast path. _pxt_map_set_by_string falls back to _pxt_map_set (interface dispatch) for non-RefMap pointer receivers rather than panicking, preserving behavior for cast-violating code. Only genuinely unrecoverable inputs (tagged-int/null) still panic -- matching the pre-optimization path.

• Two-pass timing assumption. The specialization decisions assume counts are fully populated before asm emission reads them. True today (IR is built completely, then walked), but a future change that interleaves the two would silently regress the optimizations. They would not break the code, but they might not be applied where they would otherwise have qualified.

• Helper emission. This change unconditionally emits a few helper methods, costing ~888 bytes of always-present code. An earlier iteration conditionally emitted only the helpers that ended up being used, but the code was complicated and possibly fragile. This could be revisited.

cc: Thomas Ball (@thomasjball)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR adds a set of Thumb-native compiler/backend specializations to reduce code size and overhead in interface dispatch-heavy programs (method calls, accessors, and map/field operations), primarily affecting the pxtcompiler/emitter pipeline and the generated Thumb helpers/vtables.

Changes:

• Adds a final-pass analysis (markExactIfaceWrappers) to safely bypass _args wrappers for eligible iface-dispatched procs by emitting/using a lightweight _iface entry point.
• Specializes dispatch-heavy sites by introducing shared helpers/thunks (iface calls, checked field loads, map-set-by-field-id) driven by per-site emission counters.
• Adds a new Thumb runtime entry (_pxt_map_set_by_string) and updates vtable/iface table emission to support the wrapper-skip path and an empty itable fast representation.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
pxtcompiler/emitter/ir.ts	Adds useExactIfaceWrapper state and clarifies that vtLabel() is the _args wrapper entry label.
pxtcompiler/emitter/hexfile.ts	Emits empty iface tables with mult=0 and routes iface entries to _iface when useExactIfaceWrapper is set.
pxtcompiler/emitter/emitter.ts	Records iface/map/checked-field counts, flags dynamic iface calls, introduces markExactIfaceWrappers, and selects new map-set runtime call.
pxtcompiler/emitter/backbase.ts	Implements helper/thunk specialization logic, emits _iface stubs, and adds _pxt_map_set_by_string plus map-set-by-field-id specialization.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 4/4 changed files
• Comments generated: 2
• Review effort level: Low