I wrote part of a program that does some heavy work with strings in C#. I initially chose C# not only because it was easier to use .NET's data structures, but also because I need to use this program to analyse some 2-3 million text records in a database, and it is much easier to connect to databases using C#.
There was a part of the program that was slowing down the whole code, and I decided to rewrite it in C using pointers to access every character in the string, and now the part of the code that took some 119 seconds to analyse 10,000,000 strings in C# takes the C code only 5 seconds! Performance is a priority, so I am considering rewriting the whole program in C, compiling it into a dll (something which I didn't know how to do when I started writing the program) and using DllImport from C# to use its methods to work with the database strings.
Given that rewriting the whole program will take some time, and since using DllImport to work with C#'s strings requires marshalling and such things, my question is will the performance gains from the C dll's faster string handling outweigh the performance hit of having to repeatedly marshal strings to access the C dll from C#?
First, profile your code. You might find some real headsmacker that speeds the C# code up greatly.
Second, writing the code in C using pointers is not really a fair comparison. If you are going to use pointers why not write it in assembly language and get real performance? (Not really, just reductio ad absurdam.) A better comparison for native code would be to use std::string. That way you still get a lot of help from the string class and C++ exception-safety.
Given that you have to read 2-3 million records from the DB to do this work, I very much doubt that the time spent cracking the strings is going to outweigh the elapsed time taken to load the data from the DB. So, consider instead how to structure your code so that you can begin string processing while the DB load is in progress.
If you use a SqlDataReader (say) to load the rows sequentially, it should be possible to batch up N rows as fast as possible and hand off to a separate thread for the post-processing that is your current headache and reason for this question. If you are on .Net 4.0 this is simplest to do using Task Parallel Library, and System.Collections.Concurrent could also be useful for collation of results between the threads.
This approach should mean that neither the DB latency nor the string processing is a show-stopping bottleneck, because they happen in parallel. This applies even if you are on a single-processor machine because your app can process strings while it's waiting for the next batch of data to come back from the DB over the network. If you find string processing is the slowest, use more threads (ie. Tasks) for that. If the DB is the bottleneck, then you have to look at external means to improve its performance - DB hardware or schema, network infrastructure. If you need some results in hand before processing more data, TPL allows dependencies to be created between Tasks and the coordinating thread.
My point is that I doubt it's worth the pain of re-engineering the entire app in native C or whatever. There are lots of ways to skin this cat.
One option is to rewrite the C code as unsafe C#, which ought to have roughly the same performance and won't incur any interop penalties.
There's no reason to write in C over C++, and C/C++ does not exist.
The performance implications of marshalling are fairly simple. If you have to marshal every string individually, then your performance is gonna suck. If you can marshal all ten million strings in one call, then marshalling isn't gonna make any difference at all. P/Invoke is not the fastest operation in the world but if you only invoke it a few times, it's not really gonna matter.
It might be easier to re-write your core application in C++ and then use C++/CLI to merge it with the C# database end.
There are some pretty good answers here already, especially #Steve Townsend's.
However, I felt it worth underlining a key point: There is intrinisically no reason why C code "will be faster" than C# code. That idea is a myth. Under the bonnet they both produce machine code that runs on the same CPU. As long as you don't ask the C# to do more work than the C, then it can perform just as well.
By switching to C, you forced yourself to be more frugal (you avoided using high level features like managed strings, bounds-checking, garbage collection, exception handling, etc, and simply treated your strings as blocks of raw bytes). If you applied these low-level techniques to your C# code (i.e. treating your data as raw blocks of bytes as you did in C), you would find much less difference in the speed.
For example: Last week I re-wrote (in C#) a class that a junior had written (also in C#). I achieved a 25x speed improvement over the original code by applying the same approach I would use if I were writing it in C (i.e. thinking about performance). I achieved the same speedup you're claiming without having to change to a different language at all.
Finally, just because an isolated case can be made 24x faster, it does not mean you can make your whole program 24x faster across the board by porting it all to C. As Steve said, profile it to work out where it's slow, and expend your effort only where it'll provide significant benefits. If you blindly convert to C you'll probably find you've spent a lot of time making some already-working-code a lot less maintainable.
(P.S. My viewpoint comes from 29 years experience writing assembler, C, C++, and C# code, and understanding that the language is just a tool for generating machine-code - in the case of C# vs C++ vs C, it is primarily the programmer's skill, not the language used, that determines whether the code will run quickly or slowly. C/C++ programmers tend to be better than C# programmers because they have to be - C# allows you to be lazy and get the code written quickly, while C/C++ make you do more work and the code takes longer to write. But a good programmer can get great performance out of C#, and a poor programmer can wrest abysmal performance out of C/C++)
With strings being immutable in .NET, I have no doubt that an optimised C implementation will outperform an optimised C# implemented - no doubt!
P/Invoke does incur an overhead but if you implement the bulk of the logic in C and only expose very granular API for C#, I believe you are in a much better shape.
At the end of the day, writing an implementation in C means taking longer - but that will give you better performance if you preprepared for extra development cost.
Make yourself familiar with mixed assemblies - this is better than Interop. Interop is a fast track way to deal with native libs, but mixed assemblies perform better.
Mixed assemblies on MSDN
As usual the main thing is testing and measuring...
For concatenation of long strings or multiple strings always use StringBuilder. What not everybody knows, is that StringBuilder cannot only be used to make concatenating strings faster, but also Insertion, Removal and Replacement of characters.
If this isn't fast enough for you, you can use char- or byte-arrays instead of a strings and operate on these. If you are done with manipulation you can convert the array back to a string.
There is also the option in C# to use unsafe code to get a pointer to a string and modifiy the otherwise immutable string but I wouldn't really recommend this.
As others have alread said, you can use managed C++ (C++/CLI) to nicely interoperate between .NET and managed code.
Would you mind showing us the code, maybe there are other options for optimizing?
When you start to optimize a program at a late stage (the application was written without optimization in mind) then you have to identify the bottlenecks.
Profiling is the first step to see where all those CPU cycles are going.
Just keep in mind that C# profilers will only profile your .Net application -not the IIS server implemented in the kernel nor the network stack.
And this can be an invisible bottleneck that beats by several orders of magnitude what you are focussing on when trying to make progress.
There you think that you have no influence on IIS implemented as a kernel driver -and you are right.
But you can do without it - and save a lot of time and money.
Put your talent where it can make the difference - not where you are forced to run with your feet tied together.
The inherent differences are usually given as 2x less CPU, 5x memory. In practice, few people are good enough at or C++ to gain the benefits.
There's additional gain for skimping on Unicode support, but only you can know your application well enough to know if that's safe.
Use the profiler first, make sure you not I/O bound.
I'm writing an image processing program to perform real time processing of video frames. It's in C# using the Emgu.CV library (C#) that wraps the OpenCV library dll (unmanaged C++). Now I have to write my own special algorithm and it needs to be as fast as possible.
Which will be a faster implementation of the algorithm?
Writing an 'unsafe' function in C#
Adding the function to the OpenCV library and calling it through Emgu.CV
I'm guessing C# unsafe is slower because it goes throught the JIT compiler, but would the difference be significant?
Edit:
Compiled for .NET 3.5 under VS2008
it needs to be as fast as possible
Then you're asking the wrong question.
Code it in assembler, with different versions for each significant architecture variant you support.
Use as a guide the output from a good C++ compiler with optimisation, because it probably knows some tricks that you don't. But you'll probably be able to think of some improvements, because C++ doesn't necessarily convey to the compiler all information that might be useful for optimisation. For example, C++ doesn't have the C99 keyword restrict. Although in that particular case many C++ compilers (including MSVC) do now support it, so use it where possible.
Of course if you mean, "I want it to be fast, but not to the extent of going outside C# or C++", then the answer's different ;-)
I would expect C# to at least approach the performance of similar-looking C++ in a lot of cases. I assume of course that the program will be running long enough that the time the JIT itself takes is irrelevant, but if you're processing much video then that seems likely. But I'd also expect there to be certain things which if you do them in unsafe C#, will be far slower than the equivalent thing in C++. I don't know what they are, because all my experience of JITs is in Java rather than CLR. There might also be things which are slower in C++, for instance if your algorithm makes any calls back into C# code.
Unfortunately the only way to be sure how close it is is to write both and test them, which kind of misses the point that writing the C++ version is a bunch of extra effort. However, you might be able to get a rough idea by hacking some quick code which approximates the processing you want to do, without necessarily doing all of it or getting it right. If you algorithm is going to loop over all the pixels and do a few FP ops per pixel, then hacking together a rough benchmark should take all of half an hour.
Usually I would advise against starting out thinking "this needs to be as fast as possible". Requirements should be achievable, and by definition "as X as possible" is only borderline achievable. Requirements should also be testable, and "as X as possible" isn't testable unless you somehow know a theoretical maximum. A more friendly requirement is "this needs to process video frames of such-and-such resolution in real time on such-and-such a speed CPU", or "this needs to be faster than our main competitor's product". If the C# version does that, with a bit to spare to account for unexpected minor issues in the user's setup, then job done.
It depends on the algorithm, the implementation, the C++ compiler and the JIT compiler. I guess in most cases the C++ implementation will be faster. But this may change.
The JIT compiler can optimize your code for the platform your code is running on instead of an average for all the platforms your code might run on as the C++ compiler does. This is something newer versions of the JIT compiler are increasingly good at and may in some cases give JITted code an advantage. So the answer is not as clear as you might expect. The new Java hotspot compiler does this very well for example.
Other situations where managed code may do better than C++ is where you need to allocate and deallocate lots of small objects. The .net runtime preallocates large chunks of memory that can be reused so it doesn't need to call into the os every time you need to allocate memory.
I'm not sure unsafe C# runs much faster than normal C#. You'll have to try this too.
If you want to know what's the best solution for your situation you'll have to try both and measure the difference. I dont think there will be more than
Languages don't have a "speed". It depends on the compiler and the code. It's possible to write inefficient code in any language, and a clever compiler will generate near-optimal code no matter the language of the source.
The only really unavoidable factor in performance between C# and C++ is that C# apps have to do more at startup (load the .NET framework and perhaps JIT some code), so all things being equal, they will launch a bit slower. After that, it depends, and there's no fundamental reason why one language must always be faster than another.
I'm also not aware of any reasons why unsafe C# should be faster than safe. In general, safe is good because it allows the compiler to make some much stronger assumptions, and so safe might be faster. But again, it depends on the code you're compiling, the compiler you're using and a dozen other factors.
In short, give up on the idea that you can measure the performance of a language. You can't. A language is never "fast" or slow". It doesn't have a speed.
C# is typically slower than C++. There are runtime checks in managed code. These are what make it managed, after all. C++ doesn't have to check whether the bounds of an array have been exceeded for example.
From my experience, using fixed memory helps a lot. There is a new System.IO.UnmanagedMemoryAccessor class in .NET 4.0 which may help in the future.
If you are going to implement your algorithm in a standard way I think it's irrelevant.
But some languages have bindings to apis or libraries that can give you a non standart boost.
Consider if you can use GPU processing - nvidia and ati provide the CUDA and CTM frameworks and there is an ongoing standarization effort from the khronos group (openGL). A hunch tells me also that amd will add at least one streaming processor core in their future chips. So I think there is quite a promise in that area.
Try to see if you can exploit SSE instructions, there are libraries around -most in C++ or C- that provide handy apis, check Intel's site for handy optimized libraries I do recall "Intel Performance Primitives" and a "Math Kernel".
But on the politics side, do incorporate your algorithm in OpenCV so others may benefit too.
It's a battle that will rage on forever. C versus C++ versus C# versus whatever.
In C#, the notion of unsafe is to unlock "dangerous" operations. ie, the use of pointers, and being able to cast to void pointers etc, as you can in C and C++.
Very dangerous, and very powerful! But defeating what C# was based upon.
You'll find that nowadays, Microsoft has made strides in the direction of performance, especially since the release of .NET, and the next version of .NET will actually support inline methods, as you can with C++. This will increase performance for very specific situations. I hate that it's not going to be a c# feature, but a nasty attribute the compiler picks up on - but you can't have it all.
Personally, I'm writing a game with C# and managed DirectX (why not XNA?? beyond the scope of this post). I'm using unsafe code in graphical situations, which brings about a nod in the direction of what others have said.
It's only because pixel access is rediculously slow with GDI++ that I was driven to look for alternatives. But on the whole, the c# compiler is pretty damned good, and for code comparisons (you can find articles) you'll find the performance is very comparable to c++.
That's not to say there isn't a better way to write the code.
At the end of the day, I personally see C, C++, and C# as about the same speed when executing. It's just that in some painful situations where you want to work really closely with the underlying hardware or very close to those pixels, that you'll find noticeable advantage to the C/C++ crowd.
But for business, and most things nowadays, C# is a real contender, and staying within the "safe" environment is definitely a bonus.
When stepping outside, you can get most things done with unsafe code, as I have - and boy, have I gone to some extremes! But was it worth it? Probably not. I personally wonder if I should have thought more along the lines of time-critical code in C++, and all the Object Oriented safe stuff in C#. But I have better performance than I thought I'd get!
So long as you're careful with the amount of interop calls you're making, you can get the best of both worlds. I've personally avoided that, but I don't know to what cost.
So an approach I've not tried, but would love to hear adventures in, in actually using C++.NET to develop a library in - would that be any faster than c#'s unsafe for these special graphical situations? How would that compare to native C++ compiled code? Now there's a question!
Hmm..
If you know your environment and you use a good compiler (for video processing on windows, Intel C++ Compiler is probably the best choice), C++ will beat C# hands-down for several reasons:
The C++ runtime environment has no intrinsic runtime checks (the downside being that you have free reign to blow yourself up). The C# runtime environment is going to have some sanity checking going on, at least initially.
C++ compilers are built for optimizing code. While it's theoretically possible to implement a C# JIT compiler using all of the optimizing voodo that ICC (or GCC) uses, it's doubtful that Microsoft's JIT will reliably do better. Even if the JIT compiler has runtime statistics, that's still not as good as profile-guided optimization in either ICC or GCC.
A C++ environment allows you to control your memory model much better. If your application gets to the point of thrashing the data cache or fragmenting the heap, you'll really appreciate the extra control over allocation. Heck, if you can avoid dynamic allocations, you're already much better off (hint: the running time of malloc() or any other dynamic allocator is nondeterministic, and almost all non-native languages force heavier heap usage, and thus heavier allocation).
If you use a poor compiler, or if you can't target a good chipset, all bets are off.
To be honest, what language you write it in is not nearly as important as what algorithms you use (IMO, anyway). Maybe by going to native code you might make your application faster, but it might also make it slower--it'd depend on the compiler, how the programs are written, what sort of interop costs you'd incur if you're using a mixed environment, etc. You can't really say without profiling it. (and, for that matter, have you profiled your application? Do you actually know where it's spending time?)
A better algorithm is completely independent of the language you choose.
I'm a little late in responding but I can give you some anecdotal experience. We had some matrix multiplication routines that were originally coded in C# using pointers and unsafe code. This proved to be a bottleneck in our application and we then used pinning+P/Invoke to call into a C++ version of the Matrix multiplication routine and got a factor of 2 improvement. This was a while ago with .NET 1.1, so things might be better now. As others point out, this proves nothing, but it was an interesting exercise.
I also agree with thAAAnos, if you algorithm really has to be "as fast as possible" leverage IPL or, if you must, consider a GPU implementation.
Running on the CPU is always going to be faster than running on a VM on the CPU. I can't believe people are trying to argue otherwise.
For example, we have some fairly heavy image processing work on our web server that's queued up. Initially to get it working, we used PHP's GD functions.
They were slow as hell. We rewrote the functionality we needed in C++.
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My understanding is that C/C++ produces native code to run on a particular machine architecture. Conversely, languages like Java and C# run on top of a virtual machine which abstracts away the native architecture. Logically it would seem impossible for Java or C# to match the speed of C++ because of this intermediate step, however I've been told that the latest compilers ("hot spot") can attain this speed or even exceed it.
Perhaps this is more of a compiler question than a language question, but can anyone explain in plain English how it is possible for one of these virtual machine languages to perform better than a native language?
JIT vs. Static Compiler
As already said in the previous posts, JIT can compile IL/bytecode into native code at runtime. The cost of that was mentionned, but not to its conclusion:
JIT has one massive problem is that it can't compile everything: JIT compiling takes time, so the JIT will compile only some parts of the code, whereas a static compiler will produce a full native binary: For some kind of programs, the static compiler will simply easily outperform the JIT.
Of course, C# (or Java, or VB) is usually faster to produce viable and robust solution than is C++ (if only because C++ has complex semantics, and C++ standard library, while interesting and powerful, is quite poor when compared with the full scope of the standard library from .NET or Java), so usually, the difference between C++ and .NET or Java JIT won't be visible to most users, and for those binaries that are critical, well, you can still call C++ processing from C# or Java (even if this kind of native calls can be quite costly in themselves)...
C++ metaprograming
Note that usually, you are comparing C++ runtime code with its equivalent in C# or Java. But C++ has one feature that can outperform Java/C# out of the box, that is template metaprograming: The code processing will be done at compilation time (thus, increasing vastly compilation time), resulting into zero (or almost zero) runtime.
I have yet so see a real life effect on this (I played only with concepts, but by then, the difference was seconds of execution for JIT, and zero for C++), but this is worth mentioning, alongside the fact template metaprograming is not trivial...
Edit 2011-06-10: In C++, playing with types is done at compile time, meaning producing generic code which calls non-generic code (e.g. a generic parser from string to type T, calling standard library API for types T it recognizes, and making the parser easily extensible by its user) is very easy and very efficient, whereas the equivalent in Java or C# is painful at best to write, and will always be slower and resolved at runtime even when the types are known at compile time, meaning your only hope is for the JIT to inline the whole thing.
...
Edit 2011-09-20: The team behind Blitz++ (Homepage, Wikipedia) went that way, and apparently, their goal is to reach FORTRAN's performance on scientific calculations by moving as much as possible from runtime execution to compilation time, via C++ template metaprogramming. So the "I have yet so see a real life effect on this" part I wrote above apparently does exist in real life.
Native C++ Memory Usage
C++ has a memory usage different from Java/C#, and thus, has different advantages/flaws.
No matter the JIT optimization, nothing will go has fast as direct pointer access to memory (let's ignore for a moment processor caches, etc.). So, if you have contiguous data in memory, accessing it through C++ pointers (i.e. C pointers... Let's give Caesar its due) will goes times faster than in Java/C#. And C++ has RAII, which makes a lot of processing a lot easier than in C# or even in Java. C++ does not need using to scope the existence of its objects. And C++ does not have a finally clause. This is not an error.
:-)
And despite C# primitive-like structs, C++ "on the stack" objects will cost nothing at allocation and destruction, and will need no GC to work in an independent thread to do the cleaning.
As for memory fragmentation, memory allocators in 2008 are not the old memory allocators from 1980 that are usually compared with a GC: C++ allocation can't be moved in memory, true, but then, like on a Linux filesystem: Who needs hard disk defragmenting when fragmentation does not happen? Using the right allocator for the right task should be part of the C++ developer toolkit. Now, writing allocators is not easy, and then, most of us have better things to do, and for the most of use, RAII or GC is more than good enough.
Edit 2011-10-04: For examples about efficient allocators: On Windows platforms, since Vista, the Low Fragmentation Heap is enabled by default. For previous versions, the LFH can be activated by calling the WinAPI function HeapSetInformation). On other OSes, alternative allocators are provided (see https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Malloc for a list)
Now, the memory model is somewhat becoming more complicated with the rise of multicore and multithreading technology. In this field, I guess .NET has the advantage, and Java, I was told, held the upper ground. It's easy for some "on the bare metal" hacker to praise his "near the machine" code. But now, it is quite more difficult to produce better assembly by hand than letting the compiler to its job. For C++, the compiler became usually better than the hacker since a decade. For C# and Java, this is even easier.
Still, the new standard C++0x will impose a simple memory model to C++ compilers, which will standardize (and thus simplify) effective multiprocessing/parallel/threading code in C++, and make optimizations easier and safer for compilers. But then, we'll see in some couple of years if its promises are held true.
C++/CLI vs. C#/VB.NET
Note: In this section, I am talking about C++/CLI, that is, the C++ hosted by .NET, not the native C++.
Last week, I had a training on .NET optimization, and discovered that the static compiler is very important anyway. As important than JIT.
The very same code compiled in C++/CLI (or its ancestor, Managed C++) could be times faster than the same code produced in C# (or VB.NET, whose compiler produces the same IL than C#).
Because the C++ static compiler was a lot better to produce already optimized code than C#'s.
For example, function inlining in .NET is limited to functions whose bytecode is less or equal than 32 bytes in length. So, some code in C# will produce a 40 bytes accessor, which won't be ever inlined by the JIT. The same code in C++/CLI will produce a 20 bytes accessor, which will be inlined by the JIT.
Another example is temporary variables, that are simply compiled away by the C++ compiler while still being mentioned in the IL produced by the C# compiler. C++ static compilation optimization will result in less code, thus authorizes a more aggressive JIT optimization, again.
The reason for this was speculated to be the fact C++/CLI compiler profited from the vast optimization techniques from C++ native compiler.
Conclusion
I love C++.
But as far as I see it, C# or Java are all in all a better bet. Not because they are faster than C++, but because when you add up their qualities, they end up being more productive, needing less training, and having more complete standard libraries than C++. And as for most of programs, their speed differences (in one way or another) will be negligible...
Edit (2011-06-06)
My experience on C#/.NET
I have now 5 months of almost exclusive professional C# coding (which adds up to my CV already full of C++ and Java, and a touch of C++/CLI).
I played with WinForms (Ahem...) and WCF (cool!), and WPF (Cool!!!! Both through XAML and raw C#. WPF is so easy I believe Swing just cannot compare to it), and C# 4.0.
The conclusion is that while it's easier/faster to produce a code that works in C#/Java than in C++, it's a lot harder to produce a strong, safe and robust code in C# (and even harder in Java) than in C++. Reasons abound, but it can be summarized by:
Generics are not as powerful as templates (try to write an efficient generic Parse method (from string to T), or an efficient equivalent of boost::lexical_cast in C# to understand the problem)
RAII remains unmatched (GC still can leak (yes, I had to handle that problem) and will only handle memory. Even C#'s using is not as easy and powerful because writing a correct Dispose implementations is difficult)
C# readonly and Java final are nowhere as useful as C++'s const (There's no way you can expose readonly complex data (a Tree of Nodes, for example) in C# without tremendous work, while it's a built-in feature of C++. Immutable data is an interesting solution, but not everything can be made immutable, so it's not even enough, by far).
So, C# remains an pleasant language as long as you want something that works, but a frustrating language the moment you want something that always and safely works.
Java is even more frustrating, as it has the same problems than C#, and more: Lacking the equivalent of C#'s using keyword, a very skilled colleague of mine spent too much time making sure its resources where correctly freed, whereas the equivalent in C++ would have been easy (using destructors and smart pointers).
So I guess C#/Java's productivity gain is visible for most code... until the day you need the code to be as perfect as possible. That day, you'll know pain. (you won't believe what's asked from our server and GUI apps...).
About Server-side Java and C++
I kept contact with the server teams (I worked 2 years among them, before getting back to the GUI team), at the other side of the building, and I learned something interesting.
Last years, the trend was to have the Java server apps be destined to replace the old C++ server apps, as Java has a lot of frameworks/tools, and is easy to maintain, deploy, etc. etc..
...Until the problem of low-latency reared its ugly head the last months. Then, the Java server apps, no matter the optimization attempted by our skilled Java team, simply and cleanly lost the race against the old, not really optimized C++ server.
Currently, the decision is to keep the Java servers for common use where performance while still important, is not concerned by the low-latency target, and aggressively optimize the already faster C++ server applications for low-latency and ultra-low-latency needs.
Conclusion
Nothing is as simple as expected.
Java, and even more C#, are cool languages, with extensive standard libraries and frameworks, where you can code fast, and have result very soon.
But when you need raw power, powerful and systematic optimizations, strong compiler support, powerful language features and absolute safety, Java and C# make it difficult to win the last missing but critical percents of quality you need to remain above the competition.
It's as if you needed less time and less experienced developers in C#/Java than in C++ to produce average quality code, but in the other hand, the moment you needed excellent to perfect quality code, it was suddenly easier and faster to get the results right in C++.
Of course, this is my own perception, perhaps limited to our specific needs.
But still, it is what happens today, both in the GUI teams and the server-side teams.
Of course, I'll update this post if something new happens.
Edit (2011-06-22)
"We find that in regards to performance, C++ wins out by
a large margin. However, it also required the most extensive
tuning efforts, many of which were done at a level of sophistication
that would not be available to the average programmer.
[...] The Java version was probably the simplest to implement, but the hardest to analyze for performance. Specifically the effects around garbage collection were complicated and very hard to tune."
Sources:
https://days2011.scala-lang.org/sites/days2011/files/ws3-1-Hundt.pdf
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2076322/-winner-google-language-tests
Edit (2011-09-20)
"The going word at Facebook is that 'reasonably written C++ code just runs fast,' which underscores the enormous effort spent at optimizing PHP and Java code. Paradoxically, C++ code is more difficult to write than in other languages, but efficient code is a lot easier [to write in C++ than in other languages]."
– Herb Sutter at //build/, quoting Andrei Alexandrescu
Sources:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/TOOL-835T
http://video.ch9.ms/build/2011/slides/TOOL-835T_Sutter.pptx
Generally, C# and Java can be just as fast or faster because the JIT compiler -- a compiler that compiles your IL the first time it's executed -- can make optimizations that a C++ compiled program cannot because it can query the machine. It can determine if the machine is Intel or AMD; Pentium 4, Core Solo, or Core Duo; or if supports SSE4, etc.
A C++ program has to be compiled beforehand usually with mixed optimizations so that it runs decently well on all machines, but is not optimized as much as it could be for a single configuration (i.e. processor, instruction set, other hardware).
Additionally certain language features allow the compiler in C# and Java to make assumptions about your code that allows it to optimize certain parts away that just aren't safe for the C/C++ compiler to do. When you have access to pointers there's a lot of optimizations that just aren't safe.
Also Java and C# can do heap allocations more efficiently than C++ because the layer of abstraction between the garbage collector and your code allows it to do all of its heap compression at once (a fairly expensive operation).
Now I can't speak for Java on this next point, but I know that C# for example will actually remove methods and method calls when it knows the body of the method is empty. And it will use this kind of logic throughout your code.
So as you can see, there are lots of reasons why certain C# or Java implementations will be faster.
Now this all said, specific optimizations can be made in C++ that will blow away anything that you could do with C#, especially in the graphics realm and anytime you're close to the hardware. Pointers do wonders here.
So depending on what you're writing I would go with one or the other. But if you're writing something that isn't hardware dependent (driver, video game, etc), I wouldn't worry about the performance of C# (again can't speak about Java). It'll do just fine.
One the Java side, #Swati points out a good article:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jtp09275
Whenever I talk managed vs. unmanaged performance, I like to point to the series Rico (and Raymond) did comparing C++ and C# versions of a Chinese/English dictionary. This google search will let you read for yourself, but I like Rico's summary.
So am I ashamed by my crushing defeat?
Hardly. The managed code got a very
good result for hardly any effort. To
defeat the managed Raymond had to:
Write his own file I/O stuff
Write his own string class
Write his own allocator
Write his own international mapping
Of course he used available lower
level libraries to do this, but that's
still a lot of work. Can you call
what's left an STL program? I don't
think so, I think he kept the
std::vector class which ultimately was
never a problem and he kept the find
function. Pretty much everything else
is gone.
So, yup, you can definately beat the
CLR. Raymond can make his program go
even faster I think.
Interestingly, the time to parse the
file as reported by both programs
internal timers is about the same --
30ms for each. The difference is in
the overhead.
For me the bottom line is that it took 6 revisions for the unmanaged version to beat the managed version that was a simple port of the original unmanaged code. If you need every last bit of performance (and have the time and expertise to get it), you'll have to go unmanaged, but for me, I'll take the order of magnitude advantage I have on the first versions over the 33% I gain if I try 6 times.
The compile for specific CPU optimizations are usually overrated. Just take a program in C++ and compile with optimization for pentium PRO and run on a pentium 4. Then recompile with optimize for pentium 4. I passed long afternoons doing it with several programs. General results?? Usually less than 2-3% performance increase. So the theoretical JIT advantages are almost none. Most differences of performance can only be observed when using scalar data processing features, something that will eventually need manual fine tunning to achieve maximum performance anyway. Optimizations of that sort are slow and costly to perform making them sometimes unsuitable for JIT anyway.
On real world and real application C++ is still usually faster than java, mainly because of lighter memory footprint that result in better cache performance.
But to use all of C++ capability you, the developer must work hard. You can achieve superior results, but you must use your brain for that. C++ is a language that decided to present you with more tools, charging the price that you must learn them to be able to use the language well.
JIT (Just In Time Compiling) can be incredibly fast because it optimizes for the target platform.
This means that it can take advantage of any compiler trick your CPU can support, regardless of what CPU the developer wrote the code on.
The basic concept of the .NET JIT works like this (heavily simplified):
Calling a method for the first time:
Your program code calls a method Foo()
The CLR looks at the type that implements Foo() and gets the metadata associated with it
From the metadata, the CLR knows what memory address the IL (Intermediate byte code) is stored in.
The CLR allocates a block of memory, and calls the JIT.
The JIT compiles the IL into native code, places it into the allocated memory, and then changes the function pointer in Foo()'s type metadata to point to this native code.
The native code is ran.
Calling a method for the second time:
Your program code calls a method Foo()
The CLR looks at the type that implements Foo() and finds the function pointer in the metadata.
The native code at this memory location is ran.
As you can see, the 2nd time around, its virtually the same process as C++, except with the advantage of real time optimizations.
That said, there are still other overhead issues that slow down a managed language, but the JIT helps a lot.
I like Orion Adrian's answer, but there is another aspect to it.
The same question was posed decades ago about assembly language vs. "human" languages like FORTRAN. And part of the answer is similar.
Yes, a C++ program is capable of being faster than C# on any given (non-trivial?) algorithm, but the program in C# will often be as fast or faster than a "naive" implementation in C++, and an optimized version in C++ will take longer to develop, and might still beat the C# version by a very small margin. So, is it really worth it?
You'll have to answer that question on a one-by-one basis.
That said, I'm a long time fan of C++, and I think it's an incredibly expressive and powerful language -- sometimes underappreciated. But in many "real life" problems (to me personally, that means "the kind I get paid to solve"), C# will get the job done sooner and safer.
The biggest penalty you pay? Many .NET and Java programs are memory hogs. I have seen .NET and Java apps take "hundreds" of megabytes of memory, when C++ programs of similar complexity barely scratch the "tens" of MBs.
I'm not sure how often you'll find that Java code will run faster than C++, even with Hotspot, but I'll take a swing at explaining how it could happen.
Think of compiled Java code as interpreted machine language for the JVM. When the Hotspot processor notices that certain pieces of the compiled code are going to be used many times, it performs an optimization on the machine code. Since hand-tuning Assembly is almost always faster than C++ compiled code, it's ok to figure that programmatically-tuned machine code isn't going to be too bad.
So, for highly repetitious code, I could see where it'd be possible for Hotspot JVM to run the Java faster than C++... until garbage collection comes into play. :)
Generally, your program's algorithm will be much more important to the speed of your application than the language. You can implement a poor algorithm in any language, including C++. With that in mind, you'll generally be able to write code the runs faster in a language that helps you implement a more efficient algorithm.
Higher-level languages do very well at this by providing easier access to many efficient pre-built data structures and encouraging practices that will help you avoid inefficient code. Of course, they can at times also make it easy to write a bunch of really slow code, too, so you still have to know your platform.
Also, C++ is catching up with "new" (note the quotes) features like the STL containers, auto pointers, etc -- see the boost library, for example. And you might occasionally find that the fastest way to accomplish some task requires a technique like pointer arithmetic that's forbidden in a higher-level language -- though they typcially allow you to call out to a library written in a language that can implement it as desired.
The main thing is to know the language you're using, it's associated API, what it can do, and what it's limitations are.
I don't know either...my Java programs are always slow. :-) I've never really noticed C# programs being particularly slow, though.
Here is another intersting benchmark, which you can try yourself on your own computer.
It compares ASM, VC++, C#, Silverlight, Java applet, Javascript, Flash (AS3)
Roozz plugin speed demo
Please note that the speed of javascript varries a lot depending on what browser is executing it. The same is true for Flash and Silverlight because these plugins run in the same process as the hosting browser. But the Roozz plugin run standard .exe files, which run in their own process, thus the speed is not influenced by the hosting browser.
You should define "perform better than..". Well, I know, you asked about speed, but its not everything that counts.
Do virtual machines perform more runtime overhead? Yes!
Do they eat more working memory? Yes!
Do they have higher startup costs (runtime initialization and JIT compiler) ? Yes!
Do they require a huge library installed? Yes!
And so on, its biased, yes ;)
With C# and Java you pay a price for what you get (faster coding, automatic memory management, big library and so on). But you have not much room to haggle about the details: take the complete package or nothing.
Even if those languages can optimize some code to execute faster than compiled code, the whole approach is (IMHO) inefficient. Imagine driving every day 5 miles to your workplace, with a truck! Its comfortable, it feels good, you are safe (extreme crumple zone) and after you step on the gas for some time, it will even be as fast as a standard car! Why don't we all have a truck to drive to work? ;)
In C++ you get what you pay for, not more, not less.
Quoting Bjarne Stroustrup: "C++ is my favorite garbage collected language because it generates so little garbage"
link text
The executable code produced from a Java or C# compiler is not interpretted -- it is compiled to native code "just in time" (JIT). So, the first time code in a Java/C# program is encountered during execution, there is some overhead as the "runtime compiler" (aka JIT compiler) turns the byte code (Java) or IL code (C#) into native machine instructions. However, the next time that code is encountered while the application is still running, the native code is executed immediately. This explains how some Java/C# programs appear to be slow initially, but then perform better the longer they run. A good example is an ASP.Net web site. The very first time the web site is accessed, it may be a bit slower as the C# code is compiled to native code by the JIT compiler. Subsequent accesses result in a much faster web site -- server and client side caching aside.
Some good answers here about the specific question you asked. I'd like to step back and look at the bigger picture.
Keep in mind that your user's perception of the speed of the software you write is affected by many other factors than just how well the codegen optimizes. Here are some examples:
Manual memory management is hard to do correctly (no leaks), and even harder to do effeciently (free memory soon after you're done with it). Using a GC is, in general, more likely to produce a program that manages memory well. Are you willing to work very hard, and delay delivering your software, in an attempt to out-do the GC?
My C# is easier to read & understand than my C++. I also have more ways to convince myself that my C# code is working correctly. That means I can optimize my algorithms with less risk of introducing bugs (and users don't like software that crashes, even if it does it quickly!)
I can create my software faster in C# than in C++. That frees up time to work on performance, and still deliver my software on time.
It's easier to write good UI in C# than C++, so I'm more likely to be able to push work to the background while UI stays responsive, or to provide progress or hearbeat UI when the program has to block for a while. This doesn't make anything faster, but it makes users happier about waiting.
Everything I said about C# is probably true for Java, I just don't have the experience to say for sure.
If you're a Java/C# programmer learning C++, you'll be tempted to keep thinking in terms of Java/C# and translate verbatim to C++ syntax. In that case, you only get the earlier mentioned benefits of native code vs. interpreted/JIT. To get the biggest performance gain in C++ vs. Java/C#, you have to learn to think in C++ and design code specifically to exploit the strengths of C++.
To paraphrase Edsger Dijkstra: [your first language] mutilates the mind beyond recovery.
To paraphrase Jeff Atwood: you can write [your first language] in any new language.
One of the most significant JIT optimizations is method inlining. Java can even inline virtual methods if it can guarantee runtime correctness. This kind of optimization usually cannot be performed by standard static compilers because it needs whole-program analysis, which is hard because of separate compilation (in contrast, JIT has all the program available to it). Method inlining improves other optimizations, giving larger code blocks to optimize.
Standard memory allocation in Java/C# is also faster, and deallocation (GC) is not much slower, but only less deterministic.
The virtual machine languages are unlikely to outperform compiled languages but they can get close enough that it doesn't matter, for (at least) the following reasons (I'm speaking for Java here since I've never done C#).
1/ The Java Runtime Environment is usually able to detect pieces of code that are run frequently and perform just-in-time (JIT) compilation of those sections so that, in future, they run at the full compiled speed.
2/ Vast portions of the Java libraries are compiled so that, when you call a library function, you're executing compiled code, not interpreted. You can see the code (in C) by downloading the OpenJDK.
3/ Unless you're doing massive calculations, much of the time your program is running, it's waiting for input from a very slow (relatively speaking) human.
4/ Since a lot of the validation of Java bytecode is done at the time of loading the class, the normal overhead of runtime checks is greatly reduced.
5/ At the worst case, performance-intensive code can be extracted to a compiled module and called from Java (see JNI) so that it runs at full speed.
In summary, the Java bytecode will never outperform native machine language, but there are ways to mitigate this. The big advantage of Java (as I see it) is the HUGE standard library and the cross-platform nature.
Orion Adrian, let me invert your post to see how unfounded your remarks are, because a lot can be said about C++ as well. And telling that Java/C# compiler optimize away empty functions does really make you sound like you are not my expert in optimization, because a) why should a real program contain empty functions, except for really bad legacy code, b) that is really not black and bleeding edge optimization.
Apart from that phrase, you ranted blatantly about pointers, but don't objects in Java and C# basically work like C++ pointers? May they not overlap? May they not be null? C (and most C++ implementations) has the restrict keyword, both have value types, C++ has reference-to-value with non-null guarantee. What do Java and C# offer?
>>>>>>>>>>
Generally, C and C++ can be just as fast or faster because the AOT compiler -- a compiler that compiles your code before deployment, once and for all, on your high memory many core build server -- can make optimizations that a C# compiled program cannot because it has a ton of time to do so. The compiler can determine if the machine is Intel or AMD; Pentium 4, Core Solo, or Core Duo; or if supports SSE4, etc, and if your compiler does not support runtime dispatch, you can solve for that yourself by deploying a handful of specialized binaries.
A C# program is commonly compiled upon running it so that it runs decently well on all machines, but is not optimized as much as it could be for a single configuration (i.e. processor, instruction set, other hardware), and it must spend some time first. Features like loop fission, loop inversion, automatic vectorization, whole program optimization, template expansion, IPO, and many more, are very hard to be solved all and completely in a way that does not annoy the end user.
Additionally certain language features allow the compiler in C++ or C to make assumptions about your code that allows it to optimize certain parts away that just aren't safe for the Java/C# compiler to do. When you don't have access to the full type id of generics or a guaranteed program flow there's a lot of optimizations that just aren't safe.
Also C++ and C do many stack allocations at once with just one register incrementation, which surely is more efficient than Javas and C# allocations as for the layer of abstraction between the garbage collector and your code.
Now I can't speak for Java on this next point, but I know that C++ compilers for example will actually remove methods and method calls when it knows the body of the method is empty, it will eliminate common subexpressions, it may try and retry to find optimal register usage, it does not enforce bounds checking, it will autovectorize loops and inner loops and will invert inner to outer, it moves conditionals out of loops, it splits and unsplits loops. It will expand std::vector into native zero overhead arrays as you'd do the C way. It will do inter procedural optimmizations. It will construct return values directly at the caller site. It will fold and propagate expressions. It will reorder data into a cache friendly manner. It will do jump threading. It lets you write compile time ray tracers with zero runtime overhead. It will make very expensive graph based optimizations. It will do strength reduction, were it replaces certain codes with syntactically totally unequal but semantically equivalent code (the old "xor foo, foo" is just the simplest, though outdated optimization of such kind). If you kindly ask it, you may omit IEEE floating point standards and enable even more optimizations like floating point operand re-ordering. After it has massaged and massacred your code, it might repeat the whole process, because often, certain optimizations lay the foundation for even certainer optimizations. It might also just retry with shuffled parameters and see how the other variant scores in its internal ranking. And it will use this kind of logic throughout your code.
So as you can see, there are lots of reasons why certain C++ or C implementations will be faster.
Now this all said, many optimizations can be made in C++ that will blow away anything that you could do with C#, especially in the number crunching, realtime and close-to-metal realm, but not exclusively there. You don't even have to touch a single pointer to come a long way.
So depending on what you're writing I would go with one or the other. But if you're writing something that isn't hardware dependent (driver, video game, etc), I wouldn't worry about the performance of C# (again can't speak about Java). It'll do just fine.
<<<<<<<<<<
Generally, certain generalized arguments might sound cool in specific posts, but don't generally sound certainly credible.
Anyways, to make peace: AOT is great, as is JIT. The only correct answer can be: It depends. And the real smart people know that you can use the best of both worlds anyways.
It would only happen if the Java interpreter is producing machine code that is actually better optimized than the machine code your compiler is generating for the C++ code you are writing, to the point where the C++ code is slower than the Java and the interpretation cost.
However, the odds of that actually happening are pretty low - unless perhaps Java has a very well-written library, and you have your own poorly written C++ library.
Actually, C# does not really run in a virtual machine like Java does. IL is compiled into assembly language, which is entirely native code and runs at the same speed as native code. You can pre-JIT an .NET application which entirely removes the JIT cost and then you are running entirely native code.
The slowdown with .NET will come not because .NET code is slower, but because it does a lot more behind the scenes to do things like garbage collect, check references, store complete stack frames, etc. This can be quite powerful and helpful when building applications, but also comes at a cost. Note that you could do all these things in a C++ program as well (much of the core .NET functionality is actually .NET code which you can view in ROTOR). However, if you hand wrote the same functionality you would probably end up with a much slower program since the .NET runtime has been optimized and finely tuned.
That said, one of the strengths of managed code is that it can be fully verifiable, ie. you can verify that the code will never access another processes's memory or do unsage things before you execute it. Microsoft has a research prototype of a fully managed operating system that has suprisingly shown that a 100% managed environment can actually perform significantly faster than any modern operating system by taking advantage of this verification to turn off security features that are no longer needed by managed programs (we are talking like 10x in some cases). SE radio has a great episode talking about this project.
In some cases, managed code can actually be faster than native code. For instance, "mark-and-sweep" garbage collection algorithms allow environments like the JRE or CLR to free large numbers of short-lived (usually) objects in a single pass, where most C/C++ heap objects are freed one-at-a-time.
From wikipedia:
For many practical purposes, allocation/deallocation-intensive algorithms implemented in garbage collected languages can actually be faster than their equivalents using manual heap allocation. A major reason for this is that the garbage collector allows the runtime system to amortize allocation and deallocation operations in a potentially advantageous fashion.
That said, I've written a lot of C# and a lot of C++, and I've run a lot of benchmarks. In my experience, C++ is a lot faster than C#, in two ways: (1) if you take some code that you've written in C#, port it to C++ the native code tends to be faster. How much faster? Well, it varies a whole lot, but it's not uncommon to see a 100% speed improvement. (2) In some cases, garbage collection can massively slow down a managed application. The .NET CLR does a terrible job with large heaps (say, > 2GB), and can end up spending a lot of time in GC--even in applications that have few--or even no--objects of intermediate life spans.
Of course, in most cases that I've encounted, managed languages are fast enough, by a long shot, and the maintenance and coding tradeoff for the extra performance of C++ is simply not a good one.
Here's an interesting benchmark
http://zi.fi/shootout/
Actually Sun's HotSpot JVM uses "mixed-mode" execution. It interprets the method's bytecode until it determines (usually through a counter of some sort) that a particular block of code (method, loop, try-catch block, etc.) is going to be executed a lot, then it JIT compiles it. The time required to JIT compile a method often takes longer than if the method were to be interpreted if it is a seldom run method. Performance is usually higher for "mixed-mode" because the JVM does not waste time JITing code that is rarely, if ever, run.
C# and .NET do not do this. .NET JITs everything which, often times, wastes time.
Go read about HP Labs' Dynamo, an interpreter for PA-8000 that runs on PA-8000, and often runs programs faster than they do natively. Then it won't seem at all surprising!
Don't think of it as an "intermediate step" -- running a program involves lots of other steps already, in any language.
It often comes down to:
programs have hot-spots, so even if you're slower running 95% of the body of code you have to run, you can still be performance-competitive if you're faster at the hot 5%
a HLL knows more about your intent than a LLL like C/C++, and so can generate more optimized code (OCaml has even more, and in practice is often even faster)
a JIT compiler has a lot of information that a static compiler doesn't (like, the actual data you happen to have this time)
a JIT compiler can do optimizations at run-time that traditional linkers aren't really allowed to do (like reordering branches so the common case is flat, or inlining library calls)
All in all, C/C++ are pretty lousy languages for performance: there's relatively little information about your data types, no information about your data, and no dynamic runtime to allow much in the way of run-time optimization.
You might get short bursts when Java or CLR is faster than C++, but overall the performance is worse for the life of the application:
see www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/RuntimePerformance.aspx for some results for that.
Here is answer from Cliff Click: http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2009-09-06-java-vs-c-performanceagain
My understanding is that C/C++ produces native code to run on a particular machine architecture. Conversely, languages like Java and C# run on top of a virtual machine which abstracts away the native architecture. Logically it would seem impossible for Java or C# to match the speed of C++ because of this intermediate step, however I've been told that the latest compilers ("hot spot") can attain this speed or even exceed it.
That is illogical. The use of an intermediate representation does not inherently degrade performance. For example, llvm-gcc compiles C and C++ via LLVM IR (which is a virtual infinite-register machine) to native code and it achieves excellent performance (often beating GCC).
Perhaps this is more of a compiler question than a language question, but can anyone explain in plain English how it is possible for one of these virtual machine languages to perform better than a native language?
Here are some examples:
Virtual machines with JIT compilation facilitate run-time code generation (e.g. System.Reflection.Emit on .NET) so you can compile generated code on-the-fly in languages like C# and F# but must resort to writing a comparatively-slow interpreter in C or C++. For example, to implement regular expressions.
Parts of the virtual machine (e.g. the write barrier and allocator) are often written in hand-coded assembler because C and C++ do not generate fast enough code. If a program stresses these parts of a system then it could conceivably outperform anything that can be written in C or C++.
Dynamic linking of native code requires conformance to an ABI that can impede performance and obviates whole-program optimization whereas linking is typically deferred on VMs and can benefit from whole-program optimizations (like .NET's reified generics).
I'd also like to address some issues with paercebal's highly-upvoted answer above (because someone keeps deleting my comments on his answer) that presents a counter-productively polarized view:
The code processing will be done at compilation time...
Hence template metaprogramming only works if the program is available at compile time which is often not the case, e.g. it is impossible to write a competitively performant regular expression library in vanilla C++ because it is incapable of run-time code generation (an important aspect of metaprogramming).
...playing with types is done at compile time...the equivalent in Java or C# is painful at best to write, and will always be slower and resolved at runtime even when the types are known at compile time.
In C#, that is only true of reference types and is not true for value types.
No matter the JIT optimization, nothing will go has fast as direct pointer access to memory...if you have contiguous data in memory, accessing it through C++ pointers (i.e. C pointers... Let's give Caesar its due) will goes times faster than in Java/C#.
People have observed Java beating C++ on the SOR test from the SciMark2 benchmark precisely because pointers impede aliasing-related optimizations.
Also worth noting that .NET does type specialization of generics across dynamically-linked libraries after linking whereas C++ cannot because templates must be resolved before linking. And obviously the big advantage generics have over templates is comprehensible error messages.
On top of what some others have said, from my understanding .NET and Java are better at memory allocation. E.g. they can compact memory as it gets fragmented while C++ cannot (natively, but it can if you're using a clever garbage collector).
For anything needing lots of speed, the JVM just calls a C++ implementation, so it's a question more of how good their libs are than how good the JVM is for most OS related things.
Garbage collection cuts your memory in half, but using some of the fancier STL and Boost features will have the same effect but with many times the bug potential.
If you are just using C++ libraries and lots of its high level features in a large project with many classes you will probably wind up slower than using a JVM. Except much more error prone.
However, the benefit of C++ is that it allows you to optimize yourself, otherwise you are stuck with what the compiler/jvm does. If you make your own containers, write your own memory management that's aligned, use SIMD, and drop to assembly here and there, you can speed up at least 2x-4x times over what most C++ compilers will do on their own. For some operations, 16x-32x. That's using the same algorithms, if you use better algorithms and parallelize, increases can be dramatic, sometimes thousands of times faster that commonly used methods.
I look at it from a few different points.
Given infinite time and resources, will managed or unmanaged code be faster? Clearly, the answer is that unmanaged code can always at least tie managed code in this aspect - as in the worst case, you'd just hard-code the managed code solution.
If you take a program in one language, and directly translate it to another, how much worse will it perform? Probably a lot, for any two languages. Most languages require different optimizations and have different gotchas. Micro-performance is often a lot about knowing these details.
Given finite time and resources, which of two languages will produce a better result? This is the most interesting question, as while a managed language may produce slightly slower code (given a program reasonably written for that language), that version will likely be done sooner, allowing for more time spent on optimization.
A very short answer: Given a fixed budget you will achieve better performing java application than a C++ application (ROI considerations) In addition Java platform has more decent profilers, that will help you pinpoint your hotspots more quickly