Performance of term_to_binary vs Bbinary_to_term

[Valentin Micic]

Hi all,

I did some performance measurement recently that included conversion of an arbitrary erlang term to its external binary representation via term_to_binary/1, as well as reversing the result using binary_to_term/1.

I’ve noticed that term_to_binary/1 is significantly faster than binary_to_term/1.

Also, I’ve observed that binary_to_term/1 performance gets considerably worse as complexity of specified term increases, whilst term_to_binary/1 maintains (more-less) steady performance.

(cig@REDACTED)40> tconvert:run( a, 10000000 ).

term_to_binary/1 RETURN VALUE:<<131,100,0,1,97>>
REQUEST COUNT:10000000
ELAPSED TIME (usec):97070
TIME PER REQUEST (usec): 0.009707
PROJECTED RATE (req/sec): 103018440.30081384

binary_to_term/1 RETURN VALUE:a
REQUEST COUNT:10000000
ELAPSED TIME (usec):3383483
TIME PER REQUEST (usec): 0.3383483
PROJECTED RATE (req/sec): 2955534.2822765773
ok

(cig@REDACTED)41> tconvert:run( {a,<<1,2,3>>, b, [1,2,3], c, {1,2,3}, d, #{a=>1, b=>2, c=>3}}, 10000000 ).

term_to_binary/1 RETURN VALUE:<<131,104,8,100,0,1,97,109,0,0,0,3,1,2,3,100,0,1,
                                98,107,0,3,1,2,3,100,0,1,99,104,3,97,1,97,2,97,
                                3,100,0,1,100,116,0,0,0,3,100,0,1,97,97,1,100,
                                0,1,98,97,2,100,0,1,99,97,3>>
REQUEST COUNT:10000000
ELAPSED TIME (usec):97307
TIME PER REQUEST (usec): 0.0097307
PROJECTED RATE (req/sec): 102767529.57135664

binary_to_term/1 RETURN VALUE:{a,<<1,2,3>>,
                                 b,
                                 [1,2,3],
                                 c,
                                 {1,2,3},
                                 d, 
                                 #{a => 1,b => 2,c => 3}}
REQUEST COUNT:10000000
ELAPSED TIME (usec):8747426
TIME PER REQUEST (usec): 0.8747426
PROJECTED RATE (req/sec): 1143193.4377038456
ok



I’ve performed testing on R21.1.
Any thoughts?

V/
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