uuid_v4/README.md
2021-12-17 14:37:21 +01:00

4.5 KiB

uuid_v4

This is a fast C++ header-only library to generate, serialize, print and parse UUIDs version 4 variant 1 as specified in RFC-4122. It heavily relies on SIMD operations (instruction sets SSE4.1/AVX/AVX2), c++11 PRNG library and some c++17 features.

This library generates UUIDs with pseudo-random numbers, seeded by true (hardware) random. It is not a cryptographically secure way of generating UUIDs.

While this lib is optimized to be fast with SIMD operations, it is possible to run it on any architecture with portable implementations of SIMD instructions like simd-everywhere

Update Notes

The namespace changed from UUID to UUIDv4 to avoid a conflict with a windows.h dependency.

Usage

Include "uuid_v4.h" and "endianness.h". To start generating UUIDs you need to create an object UUIDv4::UUIDGenerator<random_generator> where random_generator is a c++11 Random number engine (see random). It is highly recommended to use the default engine std::mt19937_64 as it has a SIMD implementation (at least in libstdc++) and provides better randomness.

#include "uuid_v4"
UUIDv4::UUIDGenerator<std::mt19937_64> uuidGenerator;
UUIDv4::UUID uuid = uuidGenerator.getUUID();

Serializing an UUID to a byte string (16 bytes)

std::string bytes = uuid.bytes();
or
std::string bytes1;
uuid.bytes(bytes1);
or
char bytes2[16];
uuid.bytes(bytes2);

Pretty-printing an UUID (36 bytes)

std::string s = uuid.str();
or
std::string s1;
uuid.str(s1);
or
char s2[36];
uuid.bytes(s2);

Loading an UUID from a byte string (16 bytes)

UUIDv4::UUID uuid(bytes);

Parsing an UUID from a pretty string (36 bytes)

UUIDv4::UUID uuid = UUIDv4::UUID::fromStrFactory(string);
or
UUIDv4::UUID uuid;
uuid.fromStr(string);

Comparing UUIDs

UUIDv4::UUIDGenerator<std::mt19937_64> uuidGenerator;
UUIDv4::UUID uuid1 = uuidGenerator.getUUID();
UUIDv4::UUID uuid2 = uuidGenerator.getUUID();
if (uuid1 == uuid2) {
  std::cout << "1 in 10^36 chances of this printing" << std::endl
}

stream operations

std::cout << uuid << std::endl;
std::cin >> uuid;

Benchmarks

Comparing generation time

  • Basic approach generating directly a string basic
  • libuuid libuuid uses /dev/urandom (cryptographically secure)
  • Boost UUID boost uses /dev/urandom (cryptographically secure)
  • Boost UUID with mt19937_64
  • UUID_v4 (this project)
Benchmark Time CPU Iterations
Basic 16098 ns 16021 ns 42807
Libuuid 298655 ns 293749 ns 2405
BoostUUID 48476 ns 48357 ns 14689
BoostUUIDmt19937 2673 ns 2665 ns 262395
UUID_v4 1117 ns 1114 ns 618670

Timings of UUIDs operations, there is a scale factor on x100. i.e UUIDGeneration takes 11.34ns to build one uuid.

Benchmark Time CPU Iterations
UUIDGeneration 1134 ns 1117 ns 618589
UUIDSerializeAlloc 3197 ns 3182 ns 214742
UUIDSerializeByRef 211 ns 211 ns 3312380
UUIDSerializeCharArray 64 ns 64 ns 10747617
UUIDPretty 3424 ns 3415 ns 206672
UUIDPrettyByRef 211 ns 209 ns 3319069
UUIDPrettyCharArray 88 ns 88 ns 7916795
UUIDLoad 64 ns 63 ns 10837304
UUIDParse 320 ns 316 ns 2206306
UUIDParseInPlace 317 ns 313 ns 2222561
UUIDEqual 50 ns 49 ns 12978765
UUIDCompare 65 ns 65 ns 10672186

Building

This project uses CMake to build tests and benchmarks. If you do not have googletest and googlebenchmark installed globally

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/crashoz/uuid_v4.git

otherwise

git clone https://github.com/crashoz/uuid_v4.git

Then build

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -Dtest=ON -Dbenchmark=ON ..
make
./tests/uuid_v4_test
./benchmarks/uuid_v4_benchmark