Testing Isolate Perf

isolate_testing.dart

import 'dart:convert';
import 'dart:isolate';

void main() async {
  const jsonStr = '{'
      '"name": "alif",'
      '"age": 26,'
      '"gender": "male",'
      '"office": "work from home"'
      '}';

  const testN = 100;

  Future asyncRun<Q>(Function(Q) function, Q message) async {
    function(message);
  }

  final stopwatchA = Stopwatch()..start();
  for (var i = 0; i < testN; i++) {
    jsonDecode(jsonStr);
  }
  print('$testN sync run     : ${stopwatchA.elapsed}');

  final stopwatchB = Stopwatch()..start();
  await Future.wait(
    [for (var i = 0; i < testN; i++) asyncRun(jsonDecode, jsonStr)],
  );
  print('$testN async run    : ${stopwatchB.elapsed}');

  final stopwatchC = Stopwatch()..start();
  await Future.wait(
    [for (var i = 0; i < testN; i++) Isolate.spawn(jsonDecode, jsonStr)],
  );
  print('$testN isolate.spawn: ${stopwatchC.elapsed}');
}

Hello, I was building an app for viewing cellular automaton and am a fairly new flutter dev, I've worked with JAVA before.
Was writing code to calculate and update the board every generation.
Speed is the only factor here.
I assume I should you asynchronous execution rather than creating a seperate isolate for it?
I need to make the code stop for 50 ms evey computation cycle to ensure the UI doesnt get blocked. Will this not be a problem if I use Isolates?
The Project's Repo

hi @nikhil-RGB , what i learned from my experiment on using isolates:

1. secondary isolate is slower than the main isolate in executing codes.
2. creating new isolate for every task is slower than using only small number of isolate.
3. compute(..) function is creating a new isolate every time you called it.
4. Async execution is actually still run on main isolate (so it's faster), but it could postpone task on every await to unblock UI.

so my recommendation for your case is:
if the task that you need to run for every 50ms is short live, like simple addition or boolean check, you should definitely use async/await only. but, if the task is long running like doing heavy computation such as image processing you need to use Isolate, but try to maintain only small number of it.

hi @nikhil-RGB , what i learned from my experiment on using isolates:

1. secondary isolate is slower than the main isolate in executing codes.
2. creating new isolate for every task is slower than using only small number of isolate.
3. compute(..) function is creating a new isolate every time you called it.
4. Async execution is actually still run on main isolate (so it's faster), but it could postpone task on every await to unblock UI.

so my recommendation for your case is: if the task that you need to run for every 50ms is short live, like simple addition or boolean check, you should definitely use async/await only. but, if the task is long running like doing heavy computation such as image processing you need to use Isolate, but try to maintain only small number of it.

Yes, thank you for the response!