CPP serializers benchmark

tested libraries

• bitsery 5.2.1
• boost 1.77.0
• cereal 1.3.0
• flatbuffers 2.0.0
• yas 7.1.0
• protobuf 3.17.3
• zpp_bits 2.0
• msgpack 3.3.0

GCC 11 (Ubuntu 20.04 x64)

library	test case	bin size	data size	ser time	des time
bitsery	general	70904B	6913B	1470ms	1524ms
bitsery	brief syntax1	70888B	6913B	1416ms	1561ms
bitsery	compatibility2	75192B	7113B	1490ms	1291ms
bitsery	compression3	70848B	4213B	1927ms	2044ms
bitsery	fixed buffer4	53648B	6913B	927ms	1466ms
bitsery	stream5	59568B	6913B	1611ms	6180ms
bitsery	unsafe read6	66760B	6913B	1352ms	982ms
boost	general	279024B	11037B	15126ms	12724ms
cereal	general	70560B	10413B	10777ms	9088ms
flatbuffers	general	70640B	14924B	8757ms	3361ms
handwritten	general7	47936B	10413B	1506ms	1577ms
handwritten	unsafe8	47944B	10413B	1616ms	1392ms
iostream	general9	53872B	8413B	11956ms	12928ms
msgpack	general	89144B	8857B	2770ms	14033ms
protobuf	general	2077864B	10018B	19929ms	20592ms
protobuf	arena10	2077872B	10018B	10319ms	11787ms
yas	general11	61072B	10463B	2286ms	1770ms
yas	compression12	65400B	7315B	2770ms	2498ms
yas	stream13	56184B	10463B	10871ms	11182ms
zpp_bits	general	52192B	8413B	733ms	693ms
zpp_bits	fixed buffer	48000B	8413B	620ms	667ms

Clang 12.0.1 (Ubuntu 20.04 x64)

library	test case	bin size	data size	ser time	des time
bitsery	general	53728B	6913B	2128ms	1832ms
bitsery	brief syntax1	55320B	6913B	2789ms	2071ms
bitsery	compatibility2	54360B	7113B	2195ms	1953ms
bitsery	compression3	54688B	4213B	4315ms	4181ms
bitsery	fixed buffer4	49248B	6913B	946ms	1941ms
bitsery	stream5	54776B	6913B	2047ms	6089ms
bitsery	unsafe read6	49688B	6913B	2092ms	1162ms
boost	general	237008B	11037B	16011ms	13017ms
cereal	general	61480B	10413B	9977ms	8565ms
flatbuffers	general	62512B	14924B	9812ms	3472ms
handwritten	general7	43112B	10413B	1391ms	1321ms
handwritten	unsafe8	43120B	10413B	1393ms	1212ms
iostream	general9	48632B	8413B	10992ms	12771ms
msgpack	general	77384B	8857B	3563ms	14705ms
protobuf	general	2032712B	10018B	18125ms	20211ms
protobuf	arena10	2032760B	10018B	9166ms	11378ms
yas	general11	51000B	10463B	2114ms	1558ms
yas	compression12	51424B	7315B	2874ms	2739ms
yas	stream13	54680B	10463B	10624ms	10604ms
zpp_bits	general	47128B	8413B	790ms	715ms
zpp_bits	fixed buffer	43056B	8413B	605ms	694ms

Additional tests information

1. deserialization using brief\_syntax, similar to cereal
2. forward/backward compatibility enabled for Monster
3. all components of Vec3 is compressed in [-1.0, 1.0] range with precision 0.01
4. use non-resizable buffer uint8_t[150000] for serialization
5. use stream input/output adapter, underlying type is std::stringstream
6. on deserialization do not check for errors
7. check buffer size on reading, but writing buffer is preallocated std::array<uint8_t, 1000000>
8. doesn't check for buffer size when reading, buffer: std::array<uint8_t, 1000000>
9. use std::stringstream's internal std::string
10. use arena allocator
11. use yas::mem_<io>stream as buffer
12. with yas::no_header and yas::compacted
13. using std::stringstream

NOTE: tests for protobuf and flatbuffers is not 100% fair, because huge amount of CPU cycles goes to converting from generated types, to our defined types.

Why another cpp serializers benchmark

I'm aware that cpp-serializers project already exists, but it's testing set is way too simple and you cannot compile each project to separate executable.

This project contains more realisting data that needs to be serialized.

    enum Color : uint8_t {
        Red,
        Green,
        Blue
    };

    struct Vec3 {
        float x;
        float y;
        float z;
    };

    struct Weapon {
        std::string name;
        int16_t damage;
    };

    struct Monster {
        Vec3 pos;
        int16_t mana;
        int16_t hp;
        std::string name;
        std::vector<uint8_t> inventory;
        Color color;
        std::vector<Weapon> weapons;
        Weapon equipped;
        std::vector<Vec3> path;
    };

All data is random generated, although seed is hard-coded to get predictable results when running same test multiple times.

All projects implement same interface for serialization and deserialization.

struct Buf {
    const uint8_t* ptr;
    size_t bytesCount;
};

class ISerializerTest {
public:
    virtual Buf serialize(const std::vector<MyTypes::Monster>& data) = 0;
    virtual void deserialize(Buf buf, std::vector<MyTypes::Monster>& res) = 0;
    virtual ~ISerializerTest() = default;
};

Testing routine consist of few steps:

• data generation step, in which monsters are generated (default 50 monsters)
• warmup step, in which serialization and deserialization is run 5 times, to warmup cpu cache and check if deserialized data equals to original data.
• measurement step, runs serialization and deserialization multiple times (default 300000 samples), deserialization happens on same object, to avoid costly allocate operations for new object construction each time.

Building & testing

1. Build project

   mkdir build && cd build
   cmake ..
   make

2. Run tests with ctest -VV OR
3. Generate testing results (requires nodejs)

   cd ../tools/
   npm install
   npm start