Is std::vector so much slower than plain arrays?

Question

I\'ve always thought it\'s the general wisdom that std::vector is \"implemented as an array,\" blah blah blah. Today I went down and tested it, and it seems to

Answer 1

I did some extensive tests that I wanted to for a while now. Might as well share this.

This is my dual boot machine i7-3770, 16GB Ram, x86_64, on Windows 8.1 and on Ubuntu 16.04. More information and conclusions, remarks below. Tested both MSVS 2017 and g++ (both on Windows and on Linux).

Test Program

#include 
#include 
//#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

// Note: total size of array must not exceed 0x7fffffff B = 2,147,483,647B
//  which means that largest int array size is 536,870,911
// Also image size cannot be larger than 80,000,000B
constexpr int long g_size = 100000;
int g_A[g_size];


int main()
{
    std::locale loc("");
    std::cout.imbue(loc);
    constexpr int long size = 100000;  // largest array stack size

    // stack allocated c array
    std::chrono::steady_clock::time_point start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    int A[size];
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        A[i] = i;

    auto duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "c-style stack array duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "c-style stack array size=" << sizeof(A) << "B\n\n";

    // global stack c array
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    for (int i = 0; i < g_size; i++)
        g_A[i] = i;

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "global c-style stack array duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "global c-style stack array size=" << sizeof(g_A) << "B\n\n";

    // raw c array heap array
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    int* AA = new int[size];    // bad_alloc() if it goes higher than 1,000,000,000
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        AA[i] = i;

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "c-style heap array duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "c-style heap array size=" << sizeof(AA) << "B\n\n";
    delete[] AA;

    // std::array<>
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    std::array AAA;
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        AAA[i] = i;
    //std::sort(AAA.begin(), AAA.end());

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "std::array duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "std::array size=" << sizeof(AAA) << "B\n\n";

    // std::vector<>
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    std::vector v;
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        v.push_back(i);
    //std::sort(v.begin(), v.end());

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "std::vector duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "std::vector size=" << v.size() * sizeof(v.back()) << "B\n\n";

    // std::deque<>
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    std::deque dq;
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        dq.push_back(i);
    //std::sort(dq.begin(), dq.end());

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "std::deque duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "std::deque size=" << dq.size() * sizeof(dq.back()) << "B\n\n";

    // std::queue<>
    start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();
    std::queue q;
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++)
        q.push(i);

    duration = std::chrono::duration_cast(std::chrono::steady_clock::now() - start).count();
    std::cout << "std::queue duration=" << duration / 1000.0 << "ms\n";
    std::cout << "std::queue size=" << q.size() * sizeof(q.front()) << "B\n\n";
}

Results

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// with MSVS 2017:
// >> cl /std:c++14 /Wall -O2 array_bench.cpp
//
// c-style stack array duration=0.15ms
// c-style stack array size=400,000B
//
// global c-style stack array duration=0.130ms
// global c-style stack array size=400,000B
//
// c-style heap array duration=0.90ms
// c-style heap array size=4B
//
// std::array duration=0.20ms
// std::array size=400,000B
//
// std::vector duration=0.544ms
// std::vector size=400,000B
//
// std::deque duration=1.375ms
// std::deque size=400,000B
//
// std::queue duration=1.491ms
// std::queue size=400,000B
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// with g++ version:
//      - (tdm64-1) 5.1.0 on Windows
//      - (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.10) 5.4.0 20160609 on Ubuntu 16.04
// >> g++ -std=c++14 -Wall -march=native -O2 array_bench.cpp -o array_bench
//
// c-style stack array duration=0ms
// c-style stack array size=400,000B
//
// global c-style stack array duration=0.124ms
// global c-style stack array size=400,000B
//
// c-style heap array duration=0.648ms
// c-style heap array size=8B
//
// std::array duration=1ms
// std::array size=400,000B
//
// std::vector duration=0.402ms
// std::vector size=400,000B
//
// std::deque duration=0.234ms
// std::deque size=400,000B
//
// std::queue duration=0.304ms
// std::queue size=400,000
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Notes

• Assembled by an average of 10 runs.
• I initially performed tests with std::sort() too (you can see it commented out) but removed them later because there were no significant relative differences.

My Conclusions and Remarks

• notice how global c-style array takes almost as much time as the heap c-style array
• Out of all tests I noticed a remarkable stability in std::array's time variations between consecutive runs, while others especially std:: data structs varied wildly in comparison
• O3 optimization didn't show any noteworthy time differences
• Removing optimization on Windows cl (no -O2) and on g++ (Win/Linux no -O2, no -march=native) increases times SIGNIFICANTLY. Particularly for std::data structs. Overall higher times on MSVS than g++, but std::array and c-style arrays faster on Windows without optimization
• g++ produces faster code than microsoft's compiler (apparently it runs faster even on Windows).

Verdict

Of course this is code for an optimized build. And since the question was about std::vector then yes it is !much! slower than plain arrays (optimized/unoptimized). But when you're doing a benchmark, you naturally want to produce optimized code.

The star of the show for me though has been std::array.