We have a similar discussion about tuple and struct and I write some simple benchmarks with the help from one of my colleague to identify the differences in term of performance between tuple and struct. We first start with a default struct and a tuple.
struct StructData {
int X;
int Y;
double Cost;
std::string Label;
bool operator==(const StructData &rhs) {
return std::tie(X,Y,Cost, Label) == std::tie(rhs.X, rhs.Y, rhs.Cost, rhs.Label);
}
bool operator<(const StructData &rhs) {
return X < rhs.X || (X == rhs.X && (Y < rhs.Y || (Y == rhs.Y && (Cost < rhs.Cost || (Cost == rhs.Cost && Label < rhs.Label)))));
}
};
using TupleData = std::tuple<int, int, double, std::string>;
We then use Celero to compare the performance of our simple struct and tuple. Below is the benchmark code and performance results collected using gcc-4.9.2 and clang-4.0.0:
std::vector<StructData> test_struct_data(const size_t N) {
std::vector<StructData> data(N);
std::transform(data.begin(), data.end(), data.begin(), [N](auto item) {
std::random_device rd;
std::mt19937 gen(rd());
std::uniform_int_distribution<> dis(0, N);
item.X = dis(gen);
item.Y = dis(gen);
item.Cost = item.X * item.Y;
item.Label = std::to_string(item.Cost);
return item;
});
return data;
}
std::vector<TupleData> test_tuple_data(const std::vector<StructData> &input) {
std::vector<TupleData> data(input.size());
std::transform(input.cbegin(), input.cend(), data.begin(),
[](auto item) { return std::tie(item.X, item.Y, item.Cost, item.Label); });
return data;
}
constexpr int NumberOfSamples = 10;
constexpr int NumberOfIterations = 5;
constexpr size_t N = 1000000;
auto const sdata = test_struct_data(N);
auto const tdata = test_tuple_data(sdata);
CELERO_MAIN
BASELINE(Sort, struct, NumberOfSamples, NumberOfIterations) {
std::vector<StructData> data(sdata.begin(), sdata.end());
std::sort(data.begin(), data.end());
// print(data);
}
BENCHMARK(Sort, tuple, NumberOfSamples, NumberOfIterations) {
std::vector<TupleData> data(tdata.begin(), tdata.end());
std::sort(data.begin(), data.end());
// print(data);
}
Performance results collected with clang-4.0.0
Celero
Timer resolution: 0.001000 us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group | Experiment | Prob. Space | Samples | Iterations | Baseline | us/Iteration | Iterations/sec |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | struct | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00000 | 196663.40000 | 5.08 |
Sort | tuple | Null | 10 | 5 | 0.92471 | 181857.20000 | 5.50 |
Complete.
And performance results collected using gcc-4.9.2
Celero
Timer resolution: 0.001000 us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group | Experiment | Prob. Space | Samples | Iterations | Baseline | us/Iteration | Iterations/sec |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | struct | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00000 | 219096.00000 | 4.56 |
Sort | tuple | Null | 10 | 5 | 0.91463 | 200391.80000 | 4.99 |
Complete.
From the above results we can clearly see that
-
Tuple is faster than a default struct
-
Binary produce by clang has higher performance that that of gcc. clang-vs-gcc is not the purpose of this discussion so I won’t dive into the detail.
We all know that writing a == or < or > operator for every single struct definition will be a painful and buggy task. Let replace our custom comparator using std::tie and rerun our benchmark.
bool operator<(const StructData &rhs) {
return std::tie(X,Y,Cost, Label) < std::tie(rhs.X, rhs.Y, rhs.Cost, rhs.Label);
}
Celero
Timer resolution: 0.001000 us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group | Experiment | Prob. Space | Samples | Iterations | Baseline | us/Iteration | Iterations/sec |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | struct | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00000 | 200508.20000 | 4.99 |
Sort | tuple | Null | 10 | 5 | 0.90033 | 180523.80000 | 5.54 |
Complete.
Now we can see that using std::tie makes our code more elegant and it is harder to make mistake, however, we will loose about 1% performance. I will stay with the std::tie solution for now since I also receive a warning about comparing floating point numbers with the customized comparator.
Until now we have not has any solution to make our struct code run faster yet. Let take a look at the swap function and rewrite it to see if we can gain any performance:
struct StructData {
int X;
int Y;
double Cost;
std::string Label;
bool operator==(const StructData &rhs) {
return std::tie(X,Y,Cost, Label) == std::tie(rhs.X, rhs.Y, rhs.Cost, rhs.Label);
}
void swap(StructData & other)
{
std::swap(X, other.X);
std::swap(Y, other.Y);
std::swap(Cost, other.Cost);
std::swap(Label, other.Label);
}
bool operator<(const StructData &rhs) {
return std::tie(X,Y,Cost, Label) < std::tie(rhs.X, rhs.Y, rhs.Cost, rhs.Label);
}
};
Performance results collected using clang-4.0.0
Celero
Timer resolution: 0.001000 us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group | Experiment | Prob. Space | Samples | Iterations | Baseline | us/Iteration | Iterations/sec |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | struct | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00000 | 176308.80000 | 5.67 |
Sort | tuple | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.02699 | 181067.60000 | 5.52 |
Complete.
And the performance results collected using gcc-4.9.2
Celero
Timer resolution: 0.001000 us
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group | Experiment | Prob. Space | Samples | Iterations | Baseline | us/Iteration | Iterations/sec |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort | struct | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00000 | 198844.80000 | 5.03 |
Sort | tuple | Null | 10 | 5 | 1.00601 | 200039.80000 | 5.00 |
Complete.
Now our struct is slightly faster than that of a tuple now (around 3% with clang and less than 1% with gcc), however, we do need to write our customized swap function for all of our structs.