Compiler TASM Quality — 2026-02-16

1.07x average across 13 modules (misleading — dominated by modules where function-level counting favors compiler). Median per-function overhead: ~1.50x, worst: 9.50x.

Three Root Causes (account for ~95% of overhead)

A. Digest/Struct Copy (60-70%): Compiler copies entire multi-element values (Digest=5, State8=8) via dup chains before calls. Hand TASM operates in-place. Example: authenticate_field 19 ops vs 2 hand.

B. Multi-Return Cleanup (20-25%): swap/pop chains or RAM scratch to remove dead locals below multi-element return values.

C. State Reconstruction (10-15%): Modifying one field of a struct rebuilds the entire value.

High-Impact Fixes

• H1: Extend detect_pass_through() for width > 1 params
• H2: In-place struct element modification
• H3: Argument consumption analysis (skip dup for consumed args)

Width Correlation

• Width-1 values: ~5% overhead (near-optimal)
• Digest (width-5): 60-80% overhead
• State8 (width-8): 50-85% overhead

Grade: B- (early production). H1-H3 would bring most functions to <1.5x.