Hi!
I am collecting a lot of resources about Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO) effects on different software (compilers, databases, browsers, log solutions, operating systems, etc.) - all the results are available at GitHub - zamazan4ik/awesome-pgo: Various materials about Profile Guided Optimization and other similar stuff like AutoFDO, Bolt, etc. .
I have several ideas of how PGO can be interesting to the KDE project:
- Optimize KDE software with PGO. In this case, KDE users can get better performance and responsiveness for their applications. Battery life also can be improved. PGO can be applied to different parts of the KDE project: the KDE desktop environment itself, different KDE software under the KDE umbrella (like IDE, index engine), etc. At first, I can suggest trying to evaluate PGO effects on the software, and if it shows measurable performance improvements - try to integrate PGO into the build scripts. In this case, it would be much easier for maintainers to enable PGO for KDE during the build process.
- Optimize KDE’s CI system with PGO. E.g. GCC and Clang get up to +20% compilation speed with PGO. This can be valuable for the project since it can improve the developers’ experience (faster build times) and reduce costs for the CI system.
The same ideas apply to Post-Link Optimization (PLO) too like LLVM BOLT (llvm-project/bolt/README.md at main · llvm/llvm-project · GitHub) but I recommend starting with PGO and only after that trying to play with PLO.
I would be happy to answer all your questions about PGO and PLO.
Thank you.
P.S. We already discussed this topic a bit on FOSDEM 2024 - that’s why I created the issue here 