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How fast are Linux pipes anyway? (2022)

(mazzo.li)
257 points keepamovin | 5 comments | 22 Jun 25 07:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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zh3 ◴[22 Jun 25 18:38 UTC] No.44349227[source]▶
Seared into my soul is the experience porting a linux pipe-based application to Windows, thinking it's all posix and given it's all in memory the performance will be more or less the same. The performance was hideous, even after we found that having pipes waiting for a connection more or less ground windows to a halt.

Some years later this got revisited due to needing to use the same thing under C# on Win10 and while it was better it was still a major embarrassment how big the performance gap was.

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1. SoftTalker ◴[22 Jun 25 20:24 UTC] No.44349995[source]▶
Well POSIX only defines behavior, not performance. Every platform and OS will have its own performance idiosyncracies.
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2. klysm ◴[22 Jun 25 21:23 UTC] No.44350398[source]▶
How on earth would POSIX define performance of something like pipes?
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3. SoftTalker ◴[22 Jun 25 21:30 UTC] No.44350455[source]▶
I was addressing "it's all posix and given it's all in memory the performance will be more or less the same."

Not claiming that POSIX should or could attempt to address performance.

4. pjmlp ◴[23 Jun 25 04:14 UTC] No.44352401[source]▶
By using Big O notation, or deadlines like on RTOS APIs, as two possible examples on how to express performance on a standard.
5. variadix ◴[23 Jun 25 17:07 UTC] No.44357801[source]▶
Some standards do define performance requirements, e.g. operations on data structures, in BigO notation.