Re: std::priority_queue: Abysmally bad performance versus std::set, can't figure out why.

From:
red floyd <no.spam.here@its.invalid>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:25:26 -0800
Message-ID:
<k9bbom$mqr$1@dont-email.me>
On 11/30/2012 1:08 PM, ?? Tiib wrote:

On Friday, 30 November 2012 04:40:03 UTC+2, Jeremy Murphy wrote:

To my surprise and horror, when I used std::priority_queue in place of std::set, the time and space performance is abysmally bad. So bad that I can't imagine why.

...

struct Node {
     Node(std::vector<unsigned int> S, std::shared_ptr<Node> P) : state(S), parent(P) {}
     std::vector<unsigned int> state;
     std::shared_ptr<Node> parent;
};

and the queue is then defined:

typedef std::shared_ptr<Node> Element;
typedef std::priority_queue<Element, vector<Element>, Comp> PriorityQueue;


I can't really say what is going on ... perhaps make bit smaller example that demos
the problem.

My experience is directly opposite: priority_queue washes the floors with sets,
intrusive_sets, maps, sorted lists etc in context where you always pop the best
and alternate pops and pushes rather rapidly. Also the vector on what priority_queue
adapts is way more memory efficient than std::set.

So ... it feels that you have defect somewhere but can't show where, sorry.
One note ... I tend to remove usage of shared_ptr in performance critical algorithms.
It is heavy and performs way worse than some index, iterator, unique_ptr or raw pointer.


Maybe OP's queue is reallocating the vector as he adds to the
priority queue, while std::set is node based, so that the memory
usage is higher for priority queue.

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