, 1 min read
JSON parsing: simdjson vs. JSON for Modern C++
JSON is the ubiquitous data format on the Internet. There is a lot of JSON that needs to be parsed and validated.
As we just released the latest version of our fast JSON parser (simdjson), a reader of this blog asked how it compared in speed against one of the nicest C++ JSON libraries: JSON for Modern C++ (nlohmann/json).
We have not reported on benchmarks against “JSON for Modern C++” because we knew that it was not designed for raw speed. It is designed for ease-of-use: it makes the life of the programmer as easy as possible. In contrast, simdjson optimizes for speed, even when it requires a bit more work from the programmer. Nevertheless, it is still interesting to compare speed, to know what your trade-off is.
Let us run some benchmarks… I use a Skylake processor with GNU GCC 8.3.
| file | simdjson | JSON for Modern C++ |
|---|---|---|
| apache_builds | 2.3 GB/s | 0.098 GB/s |
| github_events | 2.5 GB/s | 0.093 GB/s |
| gsoc-2018 | 3.3 GB/s | 0.091 GB/s |
| 2.2 GB/s | 0.094 GB/s |
Thus, roughly speaking, simdjson can parse, validate a JSON document and create a DOM tree, at a speed of about 2 GB/s. The easier-to-use “JSON for Modern C++” has a speed of about 0.1 GB/s, so about 20x slower. As a reference, we can easily read files from disk or the network at speeds higher than 2 GB/s.
Link: simdjson.