Re: [Boost-users] [Signals] Observation about performance

From: Doug Gregor (dgregor_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-05-10 08:32:30

On May 10, 2005, at 7:11 AM, Keith MacDonald wrote:

> I have an application that implements the Observer pattern, based on 
> the GOF
> code and was interested in using Boost.Signals in a new application.  
> Before
> committing myself, I decided to check the relative performance when
> signalling two observers.  Both tests were performed on Windows XP, 
> using
> MSVC 8 beta 2, with the /Ox optimisation.  Here are the times for 
> 6,000,000
> signals, measured with the Win32 GetTickCount() API on a 3GHz P4 with 
> 1GB
> RAM:
>
>    GOF Observer:   109
>    Boost.Signals: 6203
>
> Clearly, you have to trade convenience for performance with this 
> library.

The performance of Signals has been drastically improved in 1.33.0 
thanks to a patch from Robert Zeh. It may still not be as quick as a 
specific implementation of the Observer pattern, but it's much more 
reasonable now.

        Doug