Six codegen-side optimization passes against step() and friends. No user-facing API changes; all 296 tests pass under no-default, tokio, embassy, and tokio+journal. Cumulative on h8_cross_tree (deepest dispatch in the suite): -82% instructions / -72% cycles vs the pre_lca_fix baseline. * __PATH_DATA + __PATH_RANGE: per-(from, to) precomputed exit/enter sequences. Up/self/lateral semantics fold into one indexed lookup; removes lca() and is_up_transition() runtime helpers and the per-call heapless::Vec<u16, 16> ancestry build. Hierarchy depth no longer bounded by Vec capacity. * __DISPATCH[(state, event)]: precomputed handler resolution. The runtime __PARENT bubble walk + per-hop __handler_lookup call in step() collapses to one indexed lookup. Bubble resolution is now O(1) regardless of depth -- bubble_top (4-hop) is within 3 instructions of bubble_leaf (handler on current). __handler_lookup retained for timer dispatch. * __TERMINATE_DATA: per-state precomputed exit chain (root inclusive -- chart-root entry/exit actions are valid). do_terminate() indexes the slice instead of walking __PARENT, and uses Deque::clear() (O(1) in heapless 0.8) instead of pop_front-loop. terminate_event bench: -22.5% instr / -23.4% cycles. * TimerTable empty-skip: pop_expired / min_remaining / decrement / cancel_state each get inlined is_empty() early-out with the non-empty body marked #[cold]. * Codegen-static timer-machinery elide: when chart has no Duration triggers, every TimerTable call is omitted from step() and exit_state(). step() returns None directly. dispatch_trigger and the timer-fired arms remain but are unreachable; LLVM DCEs them. * TimerEntry.remaining_ns: u128 -> u64 (~584-year ceiling). Halves entry size; replaces u128 saturating-sub with u64. The smaller machine struct improves cache density on every bench, even timer-free ones. Bench coverage: four new benches added to cover paths the original suite missed -- bubble_leaf/mid/top (handler resolution at varying ancestor depths), timer_fire_dispatch (only bench exercising pop_expired's non-empty branch and dispatch_trigger), terminate_event (only bench exercising do_terminate), bubble_cross_tree (deep bubble + 10-state cross-tree, the realistic HSM worst case). See hsmc/benches/baseline.txt for the per-pass delta blocks and docs/003. latency-analysis.md sections 1, 9, and 12 for the cost-surface analysis. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
31 KiB
003. Latency analysis: hsmc hot-path cost surface
This is an audit of where wall-clock and code-size cost lives in hsmc's
event-dispatch path. It is intended to inform mitigation work for embedded
and embassy-rs use cases where every microsecond of dispatch overhead
couples directly into hardware-control loop tightness and jitter.
The audit is analytical, with three categories of evidence:
- Source reading of
hsmc/src/lib.rs,hsmc/src/journal.rs, andhsmc-macros/src/codegen.rs. cargo expand --releaseof two test programs (one with no observation features, one withtokio + journal) to confirm what the macro really emits.cargo rustc --release --emit=asmspot-checks of the compiled output to confirm LLVM-level claims (jump-table lowering, dead-code elimination of unused name tables, async-closure code size).
The audit deliberately stops short of recommending mitigations. A ranked menu of candidates is included at the end so a follow-up planning round can pick from it; nothing here is a commitment.
1. Cost surface, ranked by per-event impact
| # | Source | Class | Per-event cost (estimate) | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| # | Source | Class | Per-event cost (estimate) | Status |
| ---- | ----------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- |
| 1 | dispatch().await loop |
Discretionary, async-only | 2 awaits cold-start / 1 await steady-state per dispatched event. ~free if action body never Pending-yields. |
open |
| 2 | LCA + transition path build | Discretionary | heapless::Vec<u16,32>::contains scan__PATH_RANGE lookup. Up/self/lateral folded into the precomputed table; lca(), is_up_transition(), and the per-call heapless::Vec<u16,16> ancestry build are all gone. |
resolved |
| 3 | Parent walk for handler search | Discretionary | __PARENT walk + per-hop __handler_lookup call__DISPATCH[(state, event)] lookup. Every (state, event) pair statically resolved at codegen. __handler_lookup retained for timer dispatch only. |
resolved |
| 4 | __handler_lookup nested match (timer path) |
Intrinsic | Still used for timer dispatch. LLVM lowers to jump tables (verified LJTI*). ~1 indirect jump per call. |
open (already at floor) |
| 5 | run_action dispatch |
Intrinsic | One match arm + monomorphized trait call + 1 vtable hop on &mut dyn QueuePush (verified devirtualized when callsite type is known). |
open (already at floor) |
| 6 | Event queue push/pop | Intrinsic | heapless::Deque::push_back / pop_front, both O(1). |
open (already at floor) |
| 7 | __chart_observe! macro arms |
Compile-eliminable when off | Zero residue when all sink features off. Each call site collapses to {};. |
verified zero-cost |
| 8 | Journal Vec::push per atom |
Conditional on journal |
Amortized O(1); ~16 B per TraceEvent. ~11 push sites fire per transition. |
opt-in |
| 9 | Async-fn future size (binary cost) | Discretionary, async-only | ~3000 asm lines of chart machinery for a 5-state chart; dominated by async-fn state machines. | open (mitigation H3) |
| 10 | tokio::sync::mpsc::unbounded_channel |
Tokio-only, std-bound | Heap-backed channel for cross-task event injection. Embassy uses bounded embassy_sync::channel. |
feature-specific |
| 11 | TimerTable per-step / per-exit fixed cost | Discretionary | pop_expired + cancel_state calls every step / exitis_empty() + #[cold] non-empty body (runtime branch on charts that use timers; compile-time elided on timer-free charts). |
resolved |
| 12 | TimerEntry size + per-decrement work | Discretionary | remaining_ns: u128, 32-byte entry, u128 saturating-sub per decrementu64, 16-byte entry, u64 saturating-sub (~584-year ceiling; Duration::from_nanos round-trips exactly). |
resolved |
| 13 | do_terminate() exit walk |
Discretionary | __PARENT walk + pop_front-loop queue drain__TERMINATE_DATA slice + Deque::clear() (O(1)). |
resolved |
Items 2, 3, 11, 12, 13 are fully resolved by the precompute / inline-
empty-check passes in this round of work — see hsmc/benches/baseline.txt
for the per-pass delta blocks. Items 4–6 are at or near the algorithmic
floor for hierarchical state machines. Item 7 is verified zero-cost.
Items 1 (async overhead) and 9 (async machinery binary size) are the
only meaningful open items; both are addressable via a dispatch_sync()
fast path (mitigation H3 in §9), which would be a user-facing API
change and is therefore out-of-scope for this round.
2. Per-event cost model (analytical)
For a chart with hierarchy depth H=3, one entry action + one exit action,
a simple lateral transition, no observation features, cargo build --release, on a Cortex-M4-class core (~168 MHz):
| Stage | Cycles (rough) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
queue.pop_front |
~5–10 | heapless::Deque index op |
__event_to_id |
~3–5 | match arm (jump table) |
__DISPATCH[(state, event)] lookup |
~5 | one indexed load + sentinel branch |
run_action (1 action) |
~10–20 | match + monomorphized call + 1 vtable hop |
Path lookup (__PATH_RANGE) |
~5 | one indexed load + slice arithmetic |
| Exit chain (H states × A actions) | ~3 × H + 30 × A | per-state work is now ~3 instr each |
| Enter chain (H states × A actions) | ~3 × H + 30 × A | per-state work is now ~3 instr each |
| Timer machinery (timer-free chart) | 0 | codegen-elided when ir.duration_triggers.is_empty() |
| Timer machinery (timer chart, no fire) | ~3 | inlined is_empty() branches × 3 |
| Timer machinery (timer firing) | ~30–40 | decrement + pop_expired + dispatch_trigger |
Total .step() steady-state |
~0.4 – 0.8 µs | for H=3, A=1; user action body excluded |
Async overhead (.dispatch() loop) |
per-await checkpoint | ~free if no Pending-yield |
These are back-of-envelope numbers; actual measurements would tighten them by ~2× in either direction, depending on inlining decisions.
For empirical numbers (deterministic, instruction-counted), see
hsmc/benches/baseline.txt. Headline numbers (current):
h2_warm_lateral 84 instr / 397 cycles; h4_cross_tree 101 instr / 456
cycles; h8_cross_tree 93 instr / 443 cycles; bubble_top 99 instr /
453 cycles (4-hop handler resolution); bubble_cross_tree 94 instr /
444 cycles (4-hop bubble + 10-state cross-tree); terminate_event 69
instr / 311 cycles; timer_fire_dispatch 191 instr / 706 cycles;
chain_self_emit 419 instr across 4 events (≈105 instr/event).
Cumulative on h8_cross_tree: -82% instructions / -72% cycles vs
the original O(H²) LCA scan.
3. Spot-check evidence
3.1 __chart_observe! is zero-cost when off (cargo expand)
Test: tests/state_chart_const.rs, with no observation features enabled.
In the expanded source (/tmp/hsmc_expand_no_features.rs, 911 lines), every
observation site collapses to an empty block:
// in `step()`:
if self.current.is_none() {
{}; // would be observe_started
self.enter_path(0);
return self.timers.min_remaining();
}
// ...
if let Some((state, trig)) = self.timers.pop_expired(&__DEPTH) {
let __t_state = state;
let __t_trigger = trig;
{}; // would be observe_timer_fired
// ...
}
A grep for any of TraceEvent::, ::log::, ::tracing::, ::defmt::,
JournalSink::push in the expanded code returns zero matches. The
macro arms entirely vanish.
JournalSink itself becomes a unit struct when the feature is off:
#[cfg(not(feature = "journal"))]
pub struct JournalSink; // ZST — 0 bytes in the chart struct
so the __journal field on the chart costs zero bytes at runtime.
3.2 Name lookups are dead-code-eliminated (cargo rustc --emit=asm)
Test: tests/det_lateral.rs, built with --features tokio,journal.
Even with journal enabled, a grep across the 22,477 lines of generated
asm for state_name, action_name, event_name, or timer_name returns
zero matches. The journal stores u16 indices, not strings, and no
trace-* feature is on, so the name-lookup helper functions are uncalled
and DCE'd from the final binary.
This means even if a user enables journal for replay/verification, they
pay zero binary cost for the human-readable name tables until they also
enable a trace-* sink.
3.3 LLVM lowers handler matches to jump tables
Same asm file. Grep for LJTI:
leaq .LJTI2_0(%rip), %rcx
jmpq *%rax
.LJTI2_0:
.long .LBB2_1-.LJTI2_0
.long .LBB2_28-.LJTI2_0
.long .LBB2_29-.LJTI2_0
.long .LBB2_23-.LJTI2_0
Multiple jump tables are present, each sized roughly to the chart's
state/event count. This corroborates the assumption that
__handler_lookup's nested match (state_id) { match (kind, trigger_id) }
lowers to a single indirect jump on platforms LLVM can target with one,
not a chain of compares.
3.4 Async machinery code size
Symbol-by-symbol asm sizes from det_lateral:
| Symbol (async closure / future) | Asm lines | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Lat::exit_state |
~275 | one .await per exit action |
Lat::run_action |
~349 | match arm + N monomorphized async branches |
Lat::run_handlers |
~826 | loop over actions, each .await |
Lat::enter_state_no_descent |
~217 | |
Lat::step |
~970 | inlines lca, is_up_transition, etc. |
Lat::dispatch |
~137 | thin loop wrapper |
| Lat-chart total | ~2,800 | async machinery for one 5-state chart |
For comparison, Lat::new is 141 lines. The async coloring
roughly doubles to triples the binary footprint of a chart relative to a
pure sync codegen. On Cortex-M0/M0+ where flash is small, this matters.
3.5 Journal expansion adds N pushes, nothing else (cargo expand)
Same test, expanded with --features tokio,journal
(/tmp/hsmc_expand_with_journal.rs, 2,426 lines vs. 911 lines without).
Counts:
- 104 total
TraceEvent::*constructions. - 20 distinct variant names (the full vocabulary).
- 8
Vec::pushcall sites insidestep()— but only one fires per invocation (timer-fired path, event-received path, etc., are mutually exclusive).
The diff against the no-feature expansion is exactly: every {};
placeholder becomes a (&mut self.__journal).push(TraceEvent::...). No
other infrastructure is added. No locking, no allocation per push beyond
the amortized Vec growth.
4. Observability cost matrix
Distilled from lib.rs:158-712 and the spot-checks above:
| Feature(s) | Per-call CPU | Per-call alloc | Off → fully elided? |
|---|---|---|---|
(none) |
0 | 0 | Yes (verified) |
journal |
Vec::push ~10 ns amortized |
~16-24 B amortized | n/a |
trace-defmt |
format-hash u32 + field write | 0 | Yes |
trace-log |
log_enabled!() check + format if passes |
0 unless format | Yes (with small residual when on but level filtered) |
trace-tracing |
unconditional field collection + span | 0 | Yes (with ~30-cycle residual when on but no subscriber) |
The codegen emits ~11 __chart_observe! calls per typical transition
in deterministic order: EventReceived → EventDelivered →
TransitionFired → ExitBegan → ActionInvoked{Exit} → Exited →
EnterBegan → ActionInvoked{Entry} → Entered → TransitionComplete,
plus action-handler markers. That's the multiplier on every per-call
number above.
5. What is not a problem (audited and dismissed)
- Handler-lookup growth with chart size — confirmed jump-table lowering (§3.3). O(1) per event regardless of state or event count (modulo cache effects from larger jump tables).
- Trait-object cost on action dispatch — only the
&mut dyn QueuePushproxy isdyn. User actions are monomorphized trait methods (one match arm per action ID, direct calls). One vtable hop per emit, not per action. - Observation overhead with features off — confirmed zero. Verified
three ways: macro arm structure (every body
#[cfg]-gated), expanded source (every site is{};), and asm (no name-lookup symbols, no trace symbols). - Heap allocation in default build —
extern crate allocis confined tojournal.rs:26. Withjournaloff, the runtime is fully stack-only. Verified: noVec,Box, orStringin expanded sync code. Pin<Box<...>>futures on the hot path — none. Chart futures are inline state machines, not boxed.- Tokio
unbounded_channelfor embedded — irrelevant: tokio isstdanyway. Embassy uses boundedembassy_sync::channel::Channel(no alloc).
6. Event entry points
Events reach the chart's internal heapless::Deque via four distinct
paths. Each has its own latency, wakeup, ordering, and backpressure
profile, summarized below.
| Path | API | Backing | Wakeup | Ordering | Backpressure |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | chart.send(event) (sync, single-task) |
heapless::Deque::push_back |
none — caller drives | FIFO within queue | Err(QueueFull) immediate |
| 2a | chart.sender().send(ev) (tokio) |
tokio::sync::mpsc::unbounded_channel |
tokio task wake | FIFO; biased select deprioritizes vs. durings | unbounded memory |
| 2b | chart.sender().send(ev) (embassy) |
embassy_sync::channel::Channel (bounded) |
embassy task wake | FIFO; same biased-select | Err(Full) (try_send) or backpressure-await |
| 3 | actx.emit(ev) from inside an action |
same internal Deque as path 1 |
none — drained inline | drained synchronously after current handler completes; before step() returns |
sticky overflow flag |
| 4 | return from a during: future |
select! arm in run loop |
driver-specific | biased priority over channel events | silent drop on Deque full |
Path 1 (sync send) — codegen.rs:2316-2319. Bare
Deque::push_back; owning task only, no synchronization. ~5–10 cycles.
Caller is responsible for invoking step() (or dispatch() under an
async feature) to actually process the event.
Path 2 (cross-task sender()) — codegen.rs:1492 (tokio sender),
1638 (embassy sender), 1308 / 1405 (run-loop receive sites). The
canonical cross-thread / ISR path per the spec. Tokio uses an unbounded
MPSC (heap-backed; no backpressure signal); embassy uses a bounded
Channel<M, E, N> with try_send for ISR-safe non-blocking emits and
an async send that backpressures the producer. The receiver task
wakes on send; one iteration of the run-loop's select! consumes the
event and pushes it into the internal Deque.
Path 3 (self-emit from action) — actx.emit(...) goes through
EmitProxy::push (hsmc/src/lib.rs) which writes into the same
internal Deque as Path 1. Self-emitted events are drained in the
same step() call that emitted them — dispatch() runs while !queue.is_empty() { step().await } until quiescence. Nothing crosses a
task boundary.
Path 4 (during: return) — codegen.rs:1306–1313 (tokio with
durings), 1392+ (embassy). Durings are racing futures spawned in the
run-loop's select!. When one resolves to an event, the select!
unblocks and the event is pushed into the internal Deque. The
select! is biased; so durings have priority over the channel —
relevant if a during is a poll-based driver that's almost always
ready (see §8).
One ordering caveat: there is no global FIFO across paths 1–4. Within each path, events are FIFO; across paths, the order depends on when each path's wakeup arrives at the run loop. For most charts this is a non-issue, but a chart that mixes high-frequency cross-task sends with rapid self-emits could observe self-emits processed before external events that arrived "first" in wall-clock terms.
7. Cooperative-driving audit
The library targets embassy-rs's single-priority cooperative scheduler,
where any tight loop without an .await can starve other tasks. An
audit of every loop and await pattern in the runtime and codegen:
| Loop / await | Location | Bounded? | Awaits per iter? | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Main run() outer |
codegen.rs:1290+, 1379+ | by terminated flag |
yes — always | cooperative |
dispatch() drain loop |
codegen.rs:2339 | by queue size | only via step().await |
suspect — fairness |
| Transition exit/enter slice loops | codegen.rs (transition) | by precomputed slice len | yes (async variant) | OK |
| Termination drain | codegen.rs:2750 | by hierarchy + queue | yes (async variant) | OK |
| Timer decrement / pop | runtime / lib.rs | by timer-table size | sync, off the event-loop | OK |
| Send/recv backends | codegen.rs:1308, 1405 | n/a | always .await |
cooperative |
No try_recv patterns anywhere. No fixed-period polling. The library
is fundamentally event-driven and embassy-friendly.
One latent fairness characteristic: the dispatch() drain loop —
while !self.queue.is_empty() { step(Duration::ZERO).await } — never
yields to the executor between iterations. If user actions are all
synchronous and they emit a chain of follow-on events (action A emits
B, B emits C, …), each step().await completes inline, and the loop
becomes effectively synchronous for the duration of the chain. Embassy
high-priority tasks could be delayed by the chain length.
This is not a bug — dispatch() is documented to drain to
quiescence — but it's worth knowing about. A future option (not part of
this round of work) would be a feature-gated
embassy_futures::yield_now().await every Nth iteration, or a
chart-level config to bound chain length. Not done by default because
it would serialize the common case for no benefit.
8. Correctness invariants surfaced during the audit
Three contracts that aren't bugs, but warrant explicit documentation because they are easy to miss when reading the code:
Sticky overflow flag in EmitProxy (hsmc/src/lib.rs,
EmitProxy::push). When a self-emit fails because the internal Deque
is full, an __overflow flag is set on the chart. Every subsequent
actx.emit(...) in the same dispatch chain returns Err(QueueFull),
even after the queue has drained. The flag is cleared at the top of
each dispatch() call by take_overflow(). This is intentional — it
prevents a chart from observing a partially-applied sequence of
self-emissions where some made it into the queue and others did not.
Authors of actions that emit multiple events should treat
Err(QueueFull) as terminal for the current chain.
Biased select in run loop (tokio: codegen.rs:1306–1313; embassy:
1392+). The select! is biased;, so durings are always polled
before the cross-task channel. For most charts this is the right
priority — a sensor driver should pre-empt a UI event. But for a
during: that wraps a poll-based driver (one that returns Ready
nearly every poll), the channel can be starved indefinitely. Cure:
make the during yield (embassy_futures::yield_now) when there's
nothing real to report.
Cancel-safety contract on durings (hsmc/src/lib.rs:53–60). Every
.await in a during: future must be a clean resume point, because
the future will be dropped if the state transitions before it
completes. This is the standard async-cancel-safety contract, but it
is easy to violate by holding a mutable borrow across an await — the
borrow is "valid" when resumed but the surrounding state may have
moved on.
9. Candidate mitigations (menu, NOT a commitment)
Sized for sequencing in a follow-up plan-mode session. "Effort" is gut feel: L = afternoon, M = couple of days, H = a week or more.
| ID | Mitigation | Targets | Impact | Effort | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| H0 | Replace lca() with an O(H) depth-walk via the __DEPTH table. |
#2 | Landed. | - | - |
| H1 | Codegen per-(from, to) precomputed exit/enter chains as __PATH_DATA + __PATH_RANGE. |
#2 | Landed. Up/self/lateral folded into one indexed lookup; lca() and is_up_transition() removed. |
- | ~6·N² B index + ~N²·H B path data |
| T1 | Inlined is_empty() early-out on pop_expired / min_remaining / decrement / cancel_state with #[cold] non-empty bodies. |
#11 | Landed. | - | - |
| T2 | Codegen-static elide of all TimerTable calls when ir.duration_triggers.is_empty(). |
#11 | Landed. Most charts are timer-free; step() returns None directly. |
- | - |
| H4 | __DISPATCH[(state, event)] const array; one indexed lookup replaces the runtime __PARENT bubble walk + per-hop __handler_lookup. |
#3 | Landed. Each (state, event) statically resolved at codegen. | - | ~24 B per (state, event) pair |
| U1 | Shrink TimerEntry.remaining_ns: u128 → u64 (~584-year ceiling). Halves entry size; replaces u128 saturating-sub with u64. |
#12 | Landed. | - | - |
| K1 | __TERMINATE_DATA per-state precomputed exit chain (root inclusive); do_terminate() indexes a slice instead of walking __PARENT, and uses Deque::clear() (O(1)) for the queue drain. |
#13 | Landed. terminate_event -22.5% instr / -23.4% cycles. | - | ~(H+1)·N B path data |
| H3 | Provide a dispatch_sync() API that bypasses .await when the chart's actions are fully synchronous. |
#1, #9 | High for sync-action charts | L-M | API surface growth (user-facing) |
| H5 | Sparse __PATH_RANGE / __DISPATCH for very large charts (N > 64): emit only reachable pairs with a small perfect-hash. Latency-neutral; cuts O(N²) static memory growth. |
cost mitigation | Low at typical N; significant at N > 100 | M | codegen complexity |
| M1 | Eliminate the trailing step().await in dispatch() when queue empties mid-step. |
#1 | Low | L | minor refactor |
| M2 | Lazy field eval in trace-tracing arm using tracing's field-closure form to skip evaluation when filtered. |
#8 (on) | Low | L | none |
H0/H1/T1/T2/H4/U1/K1 all landed in the most recent round of work.
Callgrind now reports the entire HSM machinery as a single step
symbol — every helper inlined. The only remaining optimization avenue
that meaningfully affects per-event latency is H3 (dispatch_sync()),
which is excluded as user-facing. Memory-side mitigations (H5) only
matter for N > 64-state charts; embedded users with large charts are
the audience.
10. Where to look in the source
For anyone reading this audit and wanting to verify or extend it:
hsmc/src/lib.rs:94— the#![cfg_attr(... no_std)]boundary:158-712—__chart_observe!macro, all observation arms:737-772—JournalSinkZST/Vec duality
hsmc/src/journal.rs:26-32—extern crate allocandVecimport (only here):65-150+—TraceEventenum (the journal vocabulary)
hsmc-macros/src/codegen.rscompute_transition_paths()(top of file, aftercompute_chart_hash) — builds__PATH_DATA+__PATH_RANGEat codegen time__PARENT,__DEPTH,__DEFAULT_CHILD,__PATH_DATA,__PATH_RANGEstatic-table emission (search "const __PARENT")step()(search "fn step" / "async fn step") — sync vs. async branchesdispatch()await loop (search "fn dispatch")run_action(search "fn run_action") — sync vs. asynctransition(search "fn transition") — now a thin slice-iter wrapper- name-lookup helpers (
__state_name,__action_name, etc.) at:631-667
- Test reference shape:
hsmc/tests/state_chart_const.rsis the smallest sync-only chart in the tree;hsmc/tests/det_lateral.rsis the reference async + journal shape used for the asm spot-check.
11. Reproducing the spot-checks
# Zero-cost observation verification (expand → no observation residue)
cargo expand --release --test state_chart_const \
> /tmp/expand_no_features.rs --manifest-path hsmc/Cargo.toml
grep -E "TraceEvent::|::log::|::tracing::|::defmt::" /tmp/expand_no_features.rs
# expect: no matches
# Journal expansion (count of TraceEvent push sites)
cargo expand --release --test det_lateral --features tokio,journal \
--manifest-path hsmc/Cargo.toml \
| grep -c "TraceEvent::"
# expect: ~100
# Asm spot-check (jump tables, function sizes, name DCE)
cargo rustc --release --test det_lateral --features tokio,journal \
--manifest-path hsmc/Cargo.toml -- --emit=asm
ASM=$(find target -name 'det_lateral*.s' | head -1)
grep -E "LJTI|jmpq?[[:space:]]+\*" "$ASM" # jump tables
grep -E "state_name|action_name" "$ASM" # expect no matches
12. Summary
hsmc's hot path is mostly already at the algorithmic floor for
hierarchical state machines. The intrinsic per-event cost (parent walk,
handler lookup, action dispatch, queue ops) is small and well-monomorphized.
Observation cost is verified zero when features are off, and stays
proportional to the user's chosen sink mix when on.
Items #2, #3, #11, #12, and #13 in §1 have all landed across six optimization passes (H0 → H1 → T1 → H4 → T2 → K1+U1). Cumulative impact on the deepest dispatch (h8_cross_tree) is -82% instructions / -72% cycles vs the original O(H²) LCA scan. The headline wins by bench:
terminate_event69 instr / 311 cycles (~14 instr of HSM work after subtracting bench wrapper) —do_terminate()is one indexed sliceDeque::clear().
bubble_top99 instr / 453 cycles — 4-hop handler resolution collapses to one indexed__DISPATCHlookup; per-dispatch cost is bench-shape-independent.bubble_cross_tree94 instr / 444 cycles — realistic HSM worst case (deep bubble + 10-state cross-tree) costs the same as a plain cross-tree because bubble lookup is O(1) and transition is O(path-length).h8_cross_tree93 instr / 443 cycles — 7-deep cross-tree dispatch.
Callgrind reports the entire HSM machinery as a single step symbol —
run_handlers, run_action, transition, do_terminate,
exit_state, enter_state_no_descent, EmitProxy::push, all four
TimerTable methods, the dispatch-table lookup, and the
terminate-path lookup are all inlined.
Cost remaining, in priority order:
- Async coloring code-size cost (item #9) — chart machinery is
~3,000 asm lines for a 5-state chart, dominated by async-fn state
machines. Mitigation H3 (a
dispatch_sync()fast path) would let users with all-sync actions skip this entirely. User-facing API change — out of scope for the current optimization pass. - Bench-wrapper noise floor — at the smallest dispatch's ~38–80
instructions, the iai-callgrind wrapper (
black_box,send, instrumented call-edge crossing) accounts for ~45 instructions. Sub-bench-wrapper improvements are below the measurement floor. - Memory cost of
__PATH_DATA/__PATH_RANGE/__DISPATCH/__TERMINATE_DATAat large N —__PATH_RANGEis O(N²);__DISPATCHis O(N×E);__TERMINATE_DATAis O(N×H). For N ≤ 32 / E ≤ 16 / H ≤ 8 the total static footprint is a few KiB. A 64-state × 32-event chart would push past ~80 KiB. Mitigation H5 sketches a sparse encoding.
All addressable purely in hsmc-macros/src/codegen.rs and hsmc/src/lib.rs
without breaking runtime semantics or feature gates. The bench harness
in hsmc/benches/dispatch.rs (13 benches, every dispatch shape
covered) is in place to measure each mitigation as it lands.