simd-popcnt

simd-popcnt is a Rust library for counting the number of 1 bits (bit population count, a.k.a. Hamming weight) in an array as quickly as possible using specialized CPU instructions: POPCNT, AVX2, AVX512, ARM NEON and ARM SVE. It has no external crate dependencies and needs the Rust standard library only for runtime SIMD dispatch (CPU feature detection); it is otherwise no_std.

simd-popcnt aims to be the fastest Rust crate for counting the number of 1-bits in an array. If it runs slower than another library for your particular use case, you are welcome to submit a bug report.

simd-popcnt is an AI-assisted Rust port of the libpopcnt C/C++ library.

API

Add the crate to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
simd-popcnt = "0.2"

The core function counts the one bits in a byte slice:

/// Returns the number of set 1-bits in a byte slice
pub fn popcnt(bytes: &[u8]) -> u64

The PopcntExt trait adds a .popcnt() method to slices, arrays and Vecs of every built-in integer type (u8–u128, i8–i128, usize, isize), so you can count the bits in any integer array directly, without converting it to bytes by hand:

use simd_popcnt::{popcnt, PopcntExt};

// Byte slice — the core function:
assert_eq!(popcnt(&[0xFF, 0x0F]), 12);

// Wider integer types via the `PopcntExt::popcnt` method:
let data: &[u64] = &[1, 2, 3];
assert_eq!(data.popcnt(), 4);                // &[u64]
assert_eq!(vec![1u32, 2, 3, 4].popcnt(), 5); // Vec<u32>

// Count the set bits in a string's UTF-8 bytes.
assert_eq!("hello".as_bytes().popcnt(), 21);

Population count is independent of byte order, so .popcnt() gives the same result on little- and big-endian targets.

CPU architectures

On the following CPU architectures simd-popcnt dispatches at runtime to the fastest instruction set the CPU supports:

Architecture	Instruction sets
x86 / x86-64	POPCNT, AVX2, AVX512
AArch64 (ARM64)	NEON, SVE

On every other architecture the count uses u64::count_ones(), which the compiler lowers to the CPU's hardware popcount instruction where the target has one (WebAssembly i64.popcnt, PowerPC popcntd, RISC-V cpop with Zbb), and to a portable integer sequence otherwise.

How it works

On x86 CPUs the supported instruction sets are detected at runtime (once, then cached) and the fastest available algorithm is selected:

• If the CPU supports AVX512, the AVX512 VPOPCNTDQ algorithm is used.
• Else if the CPU supports AVX2, the AVX2 Harley-Seal algorithm is used.
• Else if the CPU supports POPCNT, the hardware POPCNT algorithm is used.
• For CPUs without POPCNT, a portable integer algorithm is used.

The library works on every architecture: it is portable by default, hardware acceleration is enabled only when the CPU supports it, and it is thread-safe.

If you compile with RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native" on, say, an x86 CPU with AVX512 support, all runtime feature checks are removed and the best algorithm is selected at compile time.

ARM SVE (Scalable Vector Extension)

ARM SVE is a vector instruction set for ARM CPUs, first widely available in 2020. Unlike NEON's fixed 128-bit vectors, SVE's vector length is implementation-defined (128 up to 2048 bits). The SVE popcount algorithm is faster than the NEON one, especially on CPUs whose SVE vector width is larger than NEON's 128 bits.

simd-popcnt detects at runtime whether the CPU supports SVE and, if so, dispatches to the SVE popcount algorithm; otherwise it transparently falls back to the NEON algorithm. Runtime SVE detection works on every operating system supported by Rust's standard library (Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, …).

One Rust-specific caveat: the SVE intrinsics in std::arch are still nightly-only (feature(stdarch_aarch64_sve)). A build script probes whether the active compiler accepts them and enables the SVE code path only when it does. On stable Rust the SVE path is compiled out and the NEON path is used; everything else builds on stable.

Development

Run the test suite with:

cargo test

The crate ships a benchmark example for measuring popcount throughput on your CPU. Build it in release mode; the fastest algorithm is selected automatically at runtime:

# Usage: cargo run --release --example benchmark [array_bytes] [iters]
cargo run --release --example benchmark

Below is a run on an Intel Core Ultra 5 245K CPU:

Iters: 10000000
Array size: 16.00 KB
Algorithm: AVX2
Status: 100%
Seconds: 1.91
85.6 GB/s

Acknowledgments

Some of the algorithms used in simd-popcnt are described in the paper Faster Population Counts using AVX2 Instructions by Daniel Lemire, Nathan Kurz and Wojciech Mula (23 Nov 2016). The AVX2 Harley Seal popcount algorithm used in simd-popcnt has been copied from Wojciech Muła's sse-popcount GitHub repo.