How We Cut Semgrep’s Taint Analysis Time by 75%

Semgrep Pro Engine 1.158.0 introduces a redesigned taint analysis engine that significantly enhances performance, resulting in up to 75% speed improvements on full scans. This update is part of a larger effort to improve Semgrep's efficiency, which began with the development of a continuous profiler called Pyro Caml for its OCaml-based core. The redesign focused on eliminating the need to run taint analysis twice, a practice that previously consumed a substantial portion of CPU time and hindered parallelization. By integrating OCaml Multicore, the team was able to refactor the code to perform taint analysis once, enabling parallel processing and reducing CPU and memory usage. This change has led to a notable reduction in scan times, with the 95th percentile decreasing from 10 minutes to 7 minutes and 30 seconds, and the 99th percentile from 45 to 35 minutes. The improvements are particularly impactful for large repositories, where scan times have decreased significantly, fostering greater consistency and reliability in Semgrep's performance.

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