Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers

Re:Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers by berkut on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @06:22AM (#7666022)

Aligning memory is pretty important for high-performance apps using SSE/AVX (archs after SB don't need alignment any more, but still benefit from it) - and generally anyway - cacheline alignement, etc, and while it's often possible to force structs / classes to be aligned by padding them, this doesn't always work.

Does Rust allow using memory allocated by specific external allocators? i.e. libnuma or something?

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Re:Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers by masklinn on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @06:48AM (#7666108)

> Aligning memory is pretty important for high-performance apps using SSE/AVX

Er… yes? Did I say it was unimportant anywhere? (also please note that I'm not a Rust developer)

> Does Rust allow using memory allocated by specific external allocators? i.e. libnuma or something?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking

* if you're asking if it's possible to use arbitrary memory returned by a third party? Then yes.

* if you're asking whether user-defined allocators or boxes are supported and you can ask the runtime to put its stuff in memory you get from e.g. a bundled jemalloc, then that's planned but not in I believe: https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/12038

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Re:Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers by berkut on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @06:57AM (#7666131)

> Er… yes? Did I say it was unimportant anywhere?

No, but that link seemed to indicate it wasn't being planned for the first release and pcwalton seems to think it's possible to get Rust programs to run as fast as C++ programs in most cases.

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Re:Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers by dbaupp on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @09:03AM (#7666636)

It can easily be added backward-compatibly, so could appear in, e.g., a 1.1 release. Or... someone who really wants it scratches their itch and gets it implemented. :)

(The speed of a language isn't determined by the speed of it's "first release".)

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Re:Rust for C++ programmers – part 4: unique pointers by twic on Tuesday April 29, 2014 @12:31PM (#7668087)

I would imagine that "most cases" don't require this kind of alignment, because most cases don't involve vector instructions.

There is certainly a set of performance-critical problems where making optimal use of vector instructions is essential. It does seem that Rust is unlikely to be competitive for those today. But i think it's a minority of all problems.

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