Performance analysis and optimization of C++ standard libraries

Aditya Kumar
Engineer Facebook

Stevenson Hall 1300
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

C++ standard libraries are some of the most widely running system libraries on consumer devices and server machines. Most engineers assume the performance of standard libraries are as good as it can be. Contrary to the popular opinion there are several performance issues in these libraries as I will show with concrete examples. I will discuss optimizations that were incorporated into open source libc++ and libstdc++ in recent years so these issues could very well be in other libraries. I will discuss how to pick the right data structures based on actual use cases rather than relying on orthodox knowledge. Lastly I will present a systematic analysis of widely used data structures and algorithms of C++ standard libraries.