Re: [boost] [xpressive] Performance Tuning?

Subject: Re: [boost] [xpressive] Performance Tuning?
From: Edward Grace (ej.grace_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-07-30 09:24:28

>> I often forget about -DNDEBUG - this can have a significant impact  
>> ~10% for
>> Spirit2 over atoi.  Presumably you define NDEBUG when compiling on  
>> Windows
>> (or is that automatically assumed for 'Release' builds?).
>>
>>> Since I will be running it on the exact same computer
>>> with the same OS, but different compilers, that will prove if it
>>> really is GCC being much slower then VC, or if they are near the  
>>> same
>>> on my computer, then it is something else.
>>
>> I await with trepidation....
>
> Very useful info, thanks.  I altered slightly to support my setup,
> since boost trunk is in the /etc/usr/lib or something like that, it is
> picked up globally.  I tried compiling it multiple times, got the same
> warning each time, never could find the output file.

With -Werror any warnings will be interpreted as errors.  If there  
are compilation errors it won't build the object / executable.

> Here is my
> latest attempt, I tried fully qualified names, did not help:
> OvermindDL1_at_overmind /cygdrive/s/cygwin/home/OvermindDL1/ejg_test
> $ g++ -DNDEBUG -O3 -ansi -pedantic -Wall -Wno-long-long -Werror
> -I/cygdrive/s/cygwin/home/OvermindDL1/ejg_test/other_includes -o
> /cygdrive/s/cygwin/home/OvermindDL1/ejg_test/ejg_uint_parser
> ejg_uint_parser_0_0_4_bind_1.cpp
> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/include/c++/bits/ 
> stl_uninitialized.h:
> In copyconstructor `std::vector<_Tp, _Alloc>::vector(const
> std::vector<_Tp, _Alloc>&) [with _Tp = std::string, _Alloc =
> std::allocator<std::string>]':
> /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/include/c++/bits/ 
> stl_uninitialized.h:82:
> warning: '__cur' might be used uninitialized in this function

Hmm..  I've never come across that before.  It looks like it's  
flagging an error relating to something in the setup of the iterators  
for parse_qi.

> So I 'guess' it worked?  But I cannot find any file it created at  
> all...
>
> Hmm, I am going to try removing -Wall.
> Yep!  It worked!

As a future tip it's better to remove -Werror if needed - that way  
you will still get any warnings - but they won't be mapped to errors.

> Proceeding to timing tests.Calibrating overhead......done
> Timer overhead (t_c) ~= : 9.67512
> Jitter               ~= : 7.47951
> qi_parse vs atoi     : 78.1417 81.6005 86.3038% faster.
> qi_parse vs strtol  : 76.5284 85.2148 86.8329% faster.
> strtol vs atoi       : -4.67955 -2.60676 -0.488886% faster.
> qi_parse vs qi_parse : -0.900454 0.465715 1.85072% faster.
>
> All done!

Hmm.  Very similar to my results - except for you strtol is slower  
than atoi.

> I ran the Visual Studio build again, still got about the same as I got
> in my last email, so yea, Visual Studio is a lot better on templates
> then GCC is.  I wonder why GCC performs so much worse...

Indeed - an open issue.  Perhaps I will play with some other options  
(march etc.) to see if there's something I've overlooked.  Well, I  
have to say I'm gaining more respect for the MS compiler - I last  
used it a very long time ago, back then it was awful!

-ed
------------------------------------------------
"No more boom and bust." -- Dr. J. G. Brown, 1997