comparison of speed and memory - c++

I have billions of lables. These lables contain about at most 20 integers ranging from 1 to 500. I need to search for the existence of each integer in each lable and maybe insert the integer to the lable. I have memory limit too. So I need to delete the lables in some cases to free up memory.
which one is better?
using vector for saving the data of lables or using unordered_set?

as already hinted in one of the comments:
std::bitset will take less space than the 20 integers and gives O(1) add/check. this is a good idea, if you have on average more than 15 values per label or can live with some extra memory usage.
if not, i'd recommend vector over set.
it is aligned in memory (less cache misses => faster)
it has smaller memory footprint
if you have bulk insert, you can reserve()
if your vector is sorted, you can use std::binary_search to have O(log n) lookup
As a rule of thumb: if you have less than 50 elements, vector is your container of choice.
As far as i got you, the critical operation is to find all labels, that contain a certain vaue?
Did you consider flipping the structure? Instead of storing ints in
each label, why not have a list of references to labels for each of
your 500 values?
Did you consider a (no-sql) DB to get rid of the memory constraints?

Related

Difference between multimap and unordered_multimap in c++? [duplicate]

I have a simple requirement, i need a map of type . however i need fastest theoretically possible retrieval time.
i used both map and the new proposed unordered_map from tr1
i found that at least while parsing a file and creating the map, by inserting an element at at time.
map took only 2 minutes while unordered_map took 5 mins.
As i it is going to be part of a code to be executed on Hadoop cluster and will contain ~100 million entries, i need smallest possible retrieval time.
Also another helpful information:
currently the data (keys) which is being inserted is range of integers from 1,2,... to ~10 million.
I can also impose user to specify max value and to use order as above, will that significantly effect my implementation? (i heard map is based on rb trees and inserting in increasing order leads to better performance (or worst?) )
here is the code
map<int,int> Label // this is being changed to unordered_map
fstream LabelFile("Labels.txt");
// Creating the map from the Label.txt
if (LabelFile.is_open())
{
while (! LabelFile.eof() )
{
getline (LabelFile,inputLine);
try
{
curnode=inputLine.substr(0,inputLine.find_first_of("\t"));
nodelabel=inputLine.substr(inputLine.find_first_of("\t")+1,inputLine.size()-1);
Label[atoi(curnode.c_str())]=atoi(nodelabel.c_str());
}
catch(char* strerr)
{
failed=true;
break;
}
}
LabelFile.close();
}
Tentative Solution: After review of comments and answers, i believe a Dynamic C++ array would be the best option, since the implementation will use dense keys. Thanks
Insertion for unordered_map should be O(1) and retrieval should be roughly O(1), (its essentially a hash-table).
Your timings as a result are way OFF, or there is something WRONG with your implementation or usage of unordered_map.
You need to provide some more information, and possibly how you are using the container.
As per section 6.3 of n1836 the complexities for insertion/retreival are given:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1836.pdf
One issue you should consider is that your implementation may need to continually be rehashing the structure, as you say you have 100mil+ items. In that case when instantiating the container, if you have a rough idea about how many "unique" elements will be inserted into the container, you can pass that in as a parameter to the constructor and the container will be instantiated accordingly with a bucket-table of appropriate size.
The extra time loading the unordered_map is due to dynamic array resizing. The resizing schedule is to double the number of cells each when the table exceeds it's load factor. So from an empty table, expect O(lg n) copies of the entire data table. You can eliminate these extra copies by sizing the hash table upfront. Specifically
Label.reserve(expected_number_of_entries / Label.max_load_factor());
Dividing by the max_load_factor is to account for the empty cells that are necessary for the hash table to operate.
unordered_map (at least in most implementations) gives fast retrieval, but relatively poor insertion speed compared to map. A tree is generally at its best when the data is randomly ordered, and at its worst when the data is ordered (you constantly insert at one end of the tree, increasing the frequency of re-balancing).
Given that it's ~10 million total entries, you could just allocate a large enough array, and get really fast lookups -- assuming enough physical memory that it didn't cause thrashing, but that's not a huge amount of memory by modern standards.
Edit: yes, a vector is basically a dynamic array.
Edit2: The code you've added some some problems. Your while (! LabelFile.eof() ) is broken. You normally want to do something like while (LabelFile >> inputdata) instead. You're also reading the data somewhat inefficiently -- what you apparently expecting is two numbers separated by a tab. That being the case, I'd write the loop something like:
while (LabelFile >> node >> label)
Label[node] = label;

How to efficiently look up elements in a large vector

I have a vector<unsigned> of size (90,000 * 9,000). I need to find many times whether an element exists in this vector or not?
For doing so, I stored the vector in a sorted form using std::sort() and then looked up elements in the vector using std::binary_search(). However on profiling using perf I find that looking up elements in vector<unsigned> is the slowest operation.
Can someone suggest some data-structure in C/C++ which I can use to efficiently look up elements in a vector of (90,000 * 9,000) elements.
I perform insertion (bulk-insertion) only once. The rest of the times I perform only lookups, so the main overhead here is because of lookups.
You've got 810 million values out of 4 billion possible values (assuming 32 bits unsigned). That's 1/5th of the total range, and uses 3.2 GB. This means you're in fact better of with a std::vector<bool> with 4 billion bits. This gives you O(1) lookup in less space (0.5 GB).
(In theory, unsigned could be 16 bits. unsigned long is at least 32 bits, std::uint32_t might be what you want)
Depending on the actual data structure of the vector the contains operation may take an O(n) or O(1). Usually, it's O(N) if vector is backed by either associative array or linked list, in this case contains will be a full scan in the worst case scenario. You have mitigated a full scan by ordering and using binary search, which is O(log (N)). Log N is pretty good complexity with only O(1) being better. So your choice is either:
Cache look up result for the items, this might be a good compromise if you have many repetitions of the same element
Replace vector with another data structure with efficient contains operation such as the one based on a hashtable or set. Note you may loose other features, such as ordering of items
Use two data structures, one for contains operations and original vector for whatever you use it for
Use a third data structure that offers a compromise, for example a data structure that work well with bloom filter
However on profiling using perf I find that looking up elements in
vector is the slowest operation.
That is half of the information you need, the other half being "how fast is it compared to other algorithms/containers"? Maybe using std::vector<> is actually the fastest, or maybe its the slowest. To find you'll have to benchmark/profile a few different designs.
For example, the following are very naive benchmarks using random integers on 1000x9000 sized containers (I would get seg-faults on larger sizes for the maps, assumably a limit of 32-bit memory).
If you need a count of non-unique integers:
std::vector<unsigned> = 500 ms
std::map<unsigned, unsigned> = 1700 ms
std::unordered_map<unsigned, unsigned> = 3700 ms
If you just need to test for the presence of unique integers:
std::vector<bool> = 15 ms
std::bitset<> = 50 ms
std::set<unsigned> = 350 ms
Note that we're not too interested in the exact values but rather the relative comparisons between containers. std::map<> is relatively slow which is not surprising given the number of dynamic allocations and non-locality of the data involved. The bitsets are by far the fastest but don't work if need the counts of non-unique integers.
I would suggest doing a similar benchmark using your exact container sizes and contents, both of which may well affect the benchmark results. It may turn out that std::vector<> may be the best solution after all but now you have some data to back up that design choice.
If you do not need iterate through the collection (in a sorted manner) since c++11 you could use std::unordered_set<yourtype> all you need to do is to provide the collection way of getting hashing and equality information for yourtype. The time of accessing element of the collection is here amortised O(1), unlike sorted vector where it's O(log(n)).

Why is it so slow to add or remove elements in the middle of a vector?

According to Accelerated C++:
To use this strategy, we need a way to remove an element from a vector. The good news is that such a facility exists; the bad news is that removing elements from vectors is slow enough to argue against using this approach for large amounts of input data. If the data we process get really big, performance degrades to an astonishing extent.
For example, if all of our students were to fail, the execution time of the function that we are about to see would grow proportionally to the square of the number of students. That means that for a class of 100 students, the program would take 10,000 times as long to run as it would for one student. The problem is that our input records are stored in a vector, which is optimized for fast random access. One price of that optimization is that it can be expensive to insert or delete elements other than at the end of the vector.
The authors do not explain why the vector would be so slow for 10,000+ students, and why in general it is slow to add or remove elements to the middle of a vector. Could somebody on Stack Overflow come up with a beautiful answer for me?
Take a row of houses: if you build them in a straight line, then finding No. 32 is really easy: just walk along the road about 32 houses' worth, and you're there. But it's not quite so fun to add house No. 31&half; in the middle — that's a big construction project with a lot of disruption to husband's/wife's and kids' lives. In the worst case, there is not enough space on the road for another house anyway, so you have to move all the houses to a different street before you even start.
Similarly, vectors store their data contiguously, i.e. in a continuous, sequential block in memory.
This is very good for quickly finding the nth element (as you simply have to trundle along n positions and dereference), but very bad for inserting into the middle as you have to move all the later elements along by one, one at a time.
Other containers are designed to be easy to insert elements, but the trade-off is that they are consequently not quite as easy to find things in. There is no container which is optimal for all operations.
When inserting elements into or removing elements from the middle of a std::vector<T> all elements after the modification point need to moved: when inserting they need to be moved further to the back, when removing they need to be moved forward to close the gap. The background is that std::vector<T> is basically just a contiguous sequence of elements.
Although this operation isn't too bad for certain types it can become comparatively slow. Note, however, that the size of the container needs to be of some sensible size or the cost of moving be significant: for small vectors, inserting into/removing from the middle is probably faster than using other data structures, e.g., lists. Eventually the cost of maintaining a more complex structure does pay off, however.
std::vector allocates memory as one extent. If you need to insert an element in the middle of the extend you have to shift right all elements of the vector that to make a free slot where you will nsert the new element. And moreover if the extend is already full of elements the vector need to allocate a new larger extend and copy all elements from the original extent to the new one.

Efficiently insert integers into a growing array if no duplicates

There is a data structure which acts like a growing array. Unknown amount of integers will be inserted into it one by one, if and only if these integers has no dup in this data structure.
Initially I thought a std::set suffices, it will automatically grow as new integers come in and make sure no dups.
But, as the set grows large, the insertion speed goes down. So any other idea to do this job besides hash?
Ps
I wonder any tricks such as xor all the elements or build a Sparse Table (just like for rmq) would apply?
If you're willing to spend memory on the problem, 2^32 bits is 512MB, at which point you can just use a bit field, one bit per possible integer. Setting aside CPU cache effects, this gives O(1) insertion and lookup times.
Without knowing more about your use case, it's difficult to say whether this is a worthwhile use of memory or a vast memory expense for almost no gain.
This site includes all the possible containers and layout their running time for each action ,
so maybe this will be useful :
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container
Seems like unordered_set as suggested is your best way.
You could try a std::unordered_set, which should be implemented as a hash table (well, I do not understand why you write "besides hash"; std::set normally is implemented as a balanced tree, which should be the reason for insufficient insertion performance).
If there is some range the numbers fall in, then you can create several std::set as buckets.
EDIT- According to the range that you have specified, std::set, should be fast enough. O(log n) is fast enough for most purposes, unless you have done some measurements and found it slow for your case.
Also you can use Pigeonhole Principle along with sets to reject any possible duplicate, (applicable when set grows large).
A bit vector can be useful to detect duplicates
Even more requirements would be necessary for an optimal decision. This suggestion is based on the following constraints:
Alcott 32 bit integers, with about 10.000.000 elements (ie any 10m out of 2^32)
It is a BST (binary search tree) where every node stores two values, the beginning and the end of a continuous region. The first element stores the number where a region starts, the second the last. This arrangement allows big regions in the hope that you reach you 10M limit with a very small tree height, so cheap search. The data structure with 10m elements would take up 8 bytes per node, plus the links (2x4bytes) maximum two children per node. So that make 80M for all the 10M elements. And of course, if there are usually more elements inserted you can keep track of the once which are not.
Now if you need to be very careful with space and after running simulations and/or statistical checks you find that there are lots of small regions (less than 32 bit in length), you may want to change your node type to one number which starts the region, plus a bitmap.
If you don't have to align access to the bitmap and, say, you only have continuous chunks with only 8 elements, then your memo requirement becuse 4+1 for the node and 4+4 bytes for the children. Hope this helps.

Difference in performance between map and unordered_map in c++

I have a simple requirement, i need a map of type . however i need fastest theoretically possible retrieval time.
i used both map and the new proposed unordered_map from tr1
i found that at least while parsing a file and creating the map, by inserting an element at at time.
map took only 2 minutes while unordered_map took 5 mins.
As i it is going to be part of a code to be executed on Hadoop cluster and will contain ~100 million entries, i need smallest possible retrieval time.
Also another helpful information:
currently the data (keys) which is being inserted is range of integers from 1,2,... to ~10 million.
I can also impose user to specify max value and to use order as above, will that significantly effect my implementation? (i heard map is based on rb trees and inserting in increasing order leads to better performance (or worst?) )
here is the code
map<int,int> Label // this is being changed to unordered_map
fstream LabelFile("Labels.txt");
// Creating the map from the Label.txt
if (LabelFile.is_open())
{
while (! LabelFile.eof() )
{
getline (LabelFile,inputLine);
try
{
curnode=inputLine.substr(0,inputLine.find_first_of("\t"));
nodelabel=inputLine.substr(inputLine.find_first_of("\t")+1,inputLine.size()-1);
Label[atoi(curnode.c_str())]=atoi(nodelabel.c_str());
}
catch(char* strerr)
{
failed=true;
break;
}
}
LabelFile.close();
}
Tentative Solution: After review of comments and answers, i believe a Dynamic C++ array would be the best option, since the implementation will use dense keys. Thanks
Insertion for unordered_map should be O(1) and retrieval should be roughly O(1), (its essentially a hash-table).
Your timings as a result are way OFF, or there is something WRONG with your implementation or usage of unordered_map.
You need to provide some more information, and possibly how you are using the container.
As per section 6.3 of n1836 the complexities for insertion/retreival are given:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1836.pdf
One issue you should consider is that your implementation may need to continually be rehashing the structure, as you say you have 100mil+ items. In that case when instantiating the container, if you have a rough idea about how many "unique" elements will be inserted into the container, you can pass that in as a parameter to the constructor and the container will be instantiated accordingly with a bucket-table of appropriate size.
The extra time loading the unordered_map is due to dynamic array resizing. The resizing schedule is to double the number of cells each when the table exceeds it's load factor. So from an empty table, expect O(lg n) copies of the entire data table. You can eliminate these extra copies by sizing the hash table upfront. Specifically
Label.reserve(expected_number_of_entries / Label.max_load_factor());
Dividing by the max_load_factor is to account for the empty cells that are necessary for the hash table to operate.
unordered_map (at least in most implementations) gives fast retrieval, but relatively poor insertion speed compared to map. A tree is generally at its best when the data is randomly ordered, and at its worst when the data is ordered (you constantly insert at one end of the tree, increasing the frequency of re-balancing).
Given that it's ~10 million total entries, you could just allocate a large enough array, and get really fast lookups -- assuming enough physical memory that it didn't cause thrashing, but that's not a huge amount of memory by modern standards.
Edit: yes, a vector is basically a dynamic array.
Edit2: The code you've added some some problems. Your while (! LabelFile.eof() ) is broken. You normally want to do something like while (LabelFile >> inputdata) instead. You're also reading the data somewhat inefficiently -- what you apparently expecting is two numbers separated by a tab. That being the case, I'd write the loop something like:
while (LabelFile >> node >> label)
Label[node] = label;