[boost] Re: new approach to smart ptrs -- no new()s is good news

From: Greg Colvin (gcolvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-01-29 13:39:28

From: Gavin Collings <gcollings_at_[hidden]>
> I've already done these tests since my implementation uses a circular list
> anyway.  I've attached the implementation, the test code and a spreadsheet I
> used to fit the results. (assignment boils down to what you have with a
> minor mod to bypass unlinking code if you're not attached).  I ran these
> tests on Visual C++ 6 SP3 in Release mode.  It may be useful to try some
> other compilers.

Could you send us the results in some non-proprietary format -- I don't have
Excel and don't want to buy it.

> In summary, sharing operations i.e. assignment / copy-cons run at about half
> the speed of their shared_ptr counterparts.  The real advantage comes from
> avoiding the huge overhead of the heap allocation for the reference count in
> shared_ptr.  This worked out at about 2.9 microseconds for shared_ptr and
> was indistinguishable from zero for linked_ptr.

And the microseconds per copy was what?

> Taking all of this into consideration, shared_ptr becomes more efficient at
> above about 50 sharing operations - well beyond common usage I should
> imagine.

Thanks for running these tests.  If you have a chance could you try the
following?

#include <boost/smart_ptr.h>

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

main(int argc, char** argv) {
   typedef counted_ptr<int> ptr_int;
   const int N = atoi(argv[1]);

   {  clock_t start = clock();
      vector<ptr_int> container;
      for (int i = 0; i < N; i++ )
         container.push_back(ptr_int(new int(rand())));
      printf("%ld\n",(long)clock() - start);
      sort(container.begin(), container.end());
      printf("%ld\n",(long)clock() - start);
   }

   {  clock_t start = clock();
      list<ptr_int> container;
      for (int i = 0; i < N; i++ )
         container.push_back(ptr_int(new int(rand())));
      printf("%ld\n",(long)clock() - start);
      container.sort();
      printf("%ld\n",(long)clock() - start);
   }

}