[boost] [serialization] performance comparison

From: brass goowy (brass_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-02-09 17:00:17

Shalom

I've been comparing results from Boost Serialization (B.Ser) and
Ebenezer Enterprises(EE) on Windows XP lately.  I've compared
saving a 
1. set<int>,                
2. list<int>, and          
3. list<int> and deque<int>. 

I'm using MSVC8.0, Boost 1.33.1, and software from www.webEbenezer.net 
to build the tests.  I use clock() statements to measure the amount 
of time used.  I've read on this list that there is an issue with 
using clock() on Windows, but I use it the same way in all the tests 
so doubt it is an issue here.
I use a buffer of 4096 bytes in the EE versions and from what I can 
tell the Boost versions also use the same size of buffer.  (I'm not
doing anything to set the buffer size with Boost.  It seems to 
default to 4096.)  Each of the containers is filled with 1,000,000 
ints.  Below are a few lines from one of the Boost tests.

ofstream ofs("myfile");
binary_oarchive oa(ofs);

clock_t start(clock());
oa << lst;  
clock_t end(clock());
cout << "That took " << end - start << "\n";

 
Build times/Exe sizes
In each of the tests the B.Ser versions take longer to build and the 
executables are more than two times bigger in bytes than the EE 
versions.

Run times
I ran the B.Ser and EE versions 3 times in a row and threw out the
fastest and slowest times and kept the remaining middle time.
The following results are from optimized (O2) versions of the tests.

set<int>
B.Ser ----- 1630
EE --------- 451
In this test the B.Ser version takes 3.6 times longer than the 
EE version.

list<int>
B.Ser ----- 1440
EE --------- 271
B.Ser takes 5.3 times longer here.

list<int> and deque<int>
B.Ser ----- 2894
EE --------- 521
B.Ser takes 5.5 times longer here.

I've only done a few tests without optimization.  The results from
those tests have had higher ratios than those listed above.  For 
example, the non-optimized B.Ser version of the list<int> test
is about 8 times slower than the non-optimized EE version.
One thing that sticks out in my mind is that the optimized B.Ser 
version of the list<int> test is 3 times slower than the non-optimized
EE version.

These results are similar to what we observed on Linux previously.
http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2005/11/96497.php

I didn't test exactly the same thing in the Windows tests and the
Linux tests.  Feedback from the Linux tests indicated some objection
to commenting out a generated call to flush the buffer we use.
I didn't comment out any of the generated code in these Windows 
tests like I did with Linux.  And so the Windows tests fill the 
buffer and flush it numerous times.  

Regards,
Brian Wood
Ebenezer Enterprises
www.webEbenezer.net
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