1️⃣🐝🏎️ The One Billion Row Challenge in Object Pascal

This is the repository that will coordinate the 1 Billion Row Challenge for Object Pascal.

The One Billion Row Challenge (1BRC) is a fun exploration of how far modern Object Pascal can be pushed for aggregating one billion rows from a text file. Grab all your threads, reach out to SIMD, or pull any other trick, and create the fastest implementation for solving this task!

The text file contains temperature values for a range of weather stations. Each row is one measurement in the format <string: station name>;<double: measurement>, with the measurement value having exactly one fractional digit. The following shows ten rows as an example:

Hamburg;12.0
Bulawayo;8.9
Palembang;38.8
St. John's;15.2
Cracow;12.6
Bridgetown;26.9
Istanbul;6.2
Roseau;34.4
Conakry;31.2
Istanbul;23.0

The task is to write an Object Pascal program which reads the file, calculates the min, mean, and max temperature value per weather station, and emits the results on STDOUT like this (i.e., sorted alphabetically by station name, and the result values per station in the format <min>/<mean>/<max>, rounded to one fractional digit towards positive infinity with both 17.01 and 17.05 being rounded to 17.1, with the decimal separator being a period .):

{Abha=-23.0/18.0/59.2, Abidjan=-16.2/26.0/67.3, Abéché=-10.0/29.4/69.0, Accra=-10.1/26.4/66.4, Addis Ababa=-23.7/16.0/67.0, Adelaide=-27.8/17.3/58.5, ...}

Entering The Challenge

Submissions will be via a PR( Pull Request ) to this repository.
The challenge will run from the 10th of March until the 10th of May, 2024.

When creating your entry, please do as follows:

Create a folder under entries with your first initial and last name, e.g., for Gustavo Carreno: entries/gcarreno.
If you're worried about anonymity, because the Internet stinks, feel free to use a fictional one: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, James Logan, Peter Parker, Diana of Themyscira. Your pick!
Create a README.md with some content about your approach, e.g., entries/gcarreno/README.md.
Put all your code under entries/<your name>/src, e.g., entries/gcarreno/src.
If you need to provide a custom .gitignore for something not present in the main one, please do.

This challenge is mainly to allow us to learn something new. This means that copying code from others will be allowed, under these conditions:

You can only use pure Object Pascal with no calls to any operating system's API or external C/C++ libraries.
There's been a bit of confusion about this restriction.
To clear that out: You can use any package/custom code you want.
As long as it compiles cross-platform and itself is only pure Object Pascal.
Anything from the Jedi Project or even mORMmot ( or anything else ), if it compiles, runs cross-platform it's allowed.
The code must have some sort of mention/attribution to the original author, in case you've used someone else's code.
It's not a blatant copy just for the sake of submission.
It adds something of value, not just a different code formatting.
All code should be formatted with the IDE's default formatting tool.

IMPORTANT
This challenge can be entered even if you only have access to the Community Edition of RAD Studio.
I have a Windows VM, with RAD Studio installed, that will do the necessary cross compilation into my Linux host.

Submit your implementation and become part of the leader board!

Rounding

Székely Balázs has provided code for rounding towards positive infinity per the original challenge.
This will be the official way to round the output values:

function TBaseline.RoundEx(x: Double): Double;
begin
  Result := PascalRound(x*10.0)/10.0;
end;

function TBaseline.PascalRound(x: Double): Double;
var
  t: Double;
begin
  //round towards positive infinity
  t := Trunc(x);
  if (x < 0.0) and (t - x = 0.5) then
  begin
    // Do nothing
  end
  else if Abs(x - t) >= 0.5 then
  begin
    t := t + Math.Sign(x);
  end;

  if t = 0.0 then
    Result := 0.0
  else
    Result := t;
end;

Generating the measurements.txt

NOTE
We now have both a Lazarus version and a Delphi version of the generator for both 32b and 64b.

In order to produce the One Billion Rows of text, we are providing the source code for the official generator, so we all have the same entry data.

Parameter	Description
-h or --help	Writes this help message and exits
-v or --version	Writes the version and exits
-i or --input-file <filename>	The file containing the Weather Stations
-o or --output-file <filename>	The file that will contain the generated lines
-n or --line-count <number>	The amount of lines to be generated ( Can use 1_000_000_000 )

Baseline

NOTE
This is still a bit in flux, still needing to get the Delphi version done.

In order to verify the official output, we are providing the source code for the official baseline.

Parameter	Description
-h or --help	Writes this help message and exits
-v or --version	Writes the version and exits
-i or --input-file <filename>	The file containing the 1 billion rows

Verify Input File

You can verify the generated measurements.txt with a SHA256 utility:

Linux

$ sha256sum ./data/measurements.txt

Windows (Command Line)

C:> CertUtil -hashfile .\data\measurements.txt SHA256

Windows (PowerShell)

Get-FileHash .\data\measurements.txt -Algorithm SHA256

Expected SHA256 hash: ebad17b266ee9f5cb3d118531f197e6f68c9ab988abc5cb9506e6257e1a52ce6

Verify Output File

NOTE

We are still waiting for the Delphi version to be completed in order for us to have an official SHA256 hash for the output.

Results

These are the results from running all entries into the challenge on my personal computer:

Ubuntu 23.10 64b
Ryzen 9 5950x 16 cores
32GB RAM
250GB SSD
1TB HDD

#	Result (m:s.ms): SSD	Result (m:s.ms): HDD	Compiler	Submitter	Notes	Certificates
1	0:29.212	2:2.504	lazarus-3.0, fpc-3.2.2	Székely Balázs	Using 16 threads
2	15:3.075	15:7.630	lazarus-3.0, fpc-3.2.2	Iwan Kelaiah	Using 1 thread

Evaluating Results

Each contender is run 10 times in a row for both SSD and HDD using hyperfine for the time taking.
The mean value of the 10 runs is the result for that contender and will be added to the results table above.
The min and max values are discarded and the remaining 8 values are then used to calculate the average.
The exact same measurements.txt file is used for evaluating all contenders.

Prize

This is being run for bragging rights only and the fun of such a challenge.

FAQ

Q: Can I copy code from other submissions?
A: Yes, you can. The primary focus of the challenge is about learning something new, rather than "winning". When you do so, please give credit to the relevant source submissions. Please don't re-submit other entries with no or only trivial improvements.

Q: What is the encoding of the measurements.txt file?
A: The file is encoded with UTF-8.

Q: Which operating system is used for evaluation?
A: Ubuntu 23.10 64b.

Honour Mentions

I'd like to thank @paweld for taking us from my miserable 20m attempt, to a whopping ~25s, beating the Python script by about 4 and a half minutes.
I'd like to thank @mobius for taking the time to provide the Delphi version of the generator.
I'd like to thank @dtpfl for his invaluable work on maintaining the README.md file up to date with everything.
I'd like to thank Székely Balázs for providing many patches to make everything compliant with the original challenge.

Links

The original repository: https://github.com/gunnarmorling/1brc
I found out about it by watching this video about an attempt in Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYng524S-MA
The blog post in question: https://www.bytesizego.com/blog/one-billion-row-challenge-go

License

This code base is available under the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Be excellent to each other!
More than winning, the purpose of this challenge is to have fun and learn something new.

License

Laksen/1brc-ObjectPascal

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