Koin vs Vanilla Kotlin
Comparing runtime performance of di with and without the Koin framework
![](../images/Kotlin_Icon.png)
Here we go again: I'm searching for a performant, convenient solution for dependency injection in Kotlin. Koin got my attention, because it seems to be simple and straightforward. Since it uses a lot of small inline functions and seems to have only a few hotspots where performance suckers could lurk, it seemed very promising. But I wouldn't want to use it in my game engine project until I can be sure that the performance impact would be negligible. So I did a ... probably totally flawed microbenchmark, that doesn't show anything, but I want to dump it here nonetheless.
So we have a simple service class and another service class that depends on the first service. The main module depends on the seconds service, so the chain has to be fulfilled.
class MainModuleKoin : Module() { override fun context(): Context = applicationContext { provide { ServiceA() } provide { ServiceB(get()) } } } class MainModuleVanilla(val serviceA: ServiceA, val serviceB: ServiceB) class MainComponentKoin : KoinComponent { val bla by inject<ServiceB>() } class MainComponentVanilla(val bla: ServiceB) class ServiceA class ServiceB(val serviceA: ServiceA) { }
Using Koin, one can simply write a few lines and everything is wired together automatically. Note that the Koin context has to be started and stopped, which has to be excluded from the benchmark later.
@JvmStatic fun benchmarkKoin(): ServiceB { return MainComponentKoin().bla } @JvmStatic fun stopKoin() { closeKoin() } @JvmStatic fun startKoin() { startKoin(listOf(MainModuleKoin())) } @JvmStatic fun benchmarkVanilla(): ServiceB { return MainComponentVanilla(ServiceB(ServiceA())).bla }
The benchmark is executed as follows, to ensure all object creation happens and context creation is done outside of the benchmarked code:
@State(Scope.Thread) public static class MyState { @Setup(Level.Trial) public void doSetup() { KoinBenchmarkRunner.startKoin(); } @TearDown(Level.Trial) public void doTearDown() { KoinBenchmarkRunner.stopKoin(); } } @Benchmark public void benchmarkKoin(Blackhole hole, MyState state) { hole.consume(KoinBenchmarkRunner.benchmarkKoin()); hole.consume(state); } @Benchmark public void benchmarkVanilla(Blackhole hole, MyState state) { hole.consume(KoinBenchmarkRunner.benchmarkVanilla()); hole.consume(state); }
The result is somehow sobering
Benchmark Mode Cnt Score Error Units BenchmarkRunner.benchmarkKoin thrpt 200 1425585.082 ± 31179.345 ops/s BenchmarkRunner.benchmarkVanilla thrpt 200 106484919.110 ± 1121927.712 ops/s
Even though I'm aware that this is an artificial benchmark that may be flawed, it's pretty much clear that using Koin will have a huge impact on performance, that could make program infrastrucutre slower by a factor of 100. Of course, we're talking about dependency injection at object creation time, which should be a rare case in a game engine. Nonetheless, not too good from my sight.