Benchy: C++ Container Performance Analysis (Proof of Concept)

A proof-of-concept C++ benchmarking project comparing custom container implementations against STL counterparts. This project serves as an educational demonstration using Google Benchmark to analyze performance characteristics of different container implementations.

Overview

This experimental project implements and benchmarks custom container classes, focusing on:

• Basic performance optimization techniques
• Modern C++ implementation examples
• Comparative analysis against STL implementations
• Demonstration of benchmarking methodology

Current Implementations (Experimental)

• Custom Vector

  • Basic O(1) amortized operations
  • Move semantics optimization examples
  • Manual memory management demonstration

• Custom Hash Map

  • Simple open addressing with quadratic probing
  • Basic cache locality optimizations
  • Move-only semantics implementation

Note: These implementations are for demonstration purposes and lack production-ready features. Users should review the code comments for limitations and potential improvements.

Building the Project

Prerequisites

• CMake (3.15 or higher)
• C++17 compatible compiler
• Git

Linux

# Clone the repository with submodules
git clone https://github.com/ehhbased/benchy.git --recursive
cd benchy

# Create build directory and build
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make

Windows

# Clone the repository with submodules
git clone https://github.com/ehhbased/benchy.git --recursive
cd benchy

# Run the build script
build.bat

Running Benchmarks

./benchy_main

The benchmark suite includes:

• Operation performance (insertion, access, deletion)
• Memory usage patterns
• Cache efficiency
• Tests with varying data sizes (8 to 8192 elements)
• Multiple data type comparisons

Project Structure

benchy/
├── include/
│   ├── containers/     # Custom container implementations
│   ├── benchmarks/     # Benchmark definitions
│   └── utils/          # Utility functions
├── src/
│   └── main.cpp        # Benchmark runner
└── benchmark/          # Google Benchmark submodule

References

• Google Benchmark
• C++ Core Guidelines
• Chandler Carruth's CppCon Talk on Benchmarking
• Open Addressing Hash Tables

License

This project is for educational and demonstration purposes.