Performance Improvements from ProtoBuf 2.5

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Version 2.5 is released:
http://protobuf.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/CHANGES.txt


From the release notes:
"Added Parser to parse directly into messages without a Builder. For
    example,
      Foo foo = Foo.PARSER.ParseFrom(input);
    Using Parser is ~25% faster than using Builder to parse messages."


Is it possible to use Parser for a performance gain in protobuf-rpc-pro?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by kryptoni...@gmail.com on 6 Mar 2013 at 6:12

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'll look into the upgrade and perf. improvement. Thx for raising attention to 
this.
regards,P.

Original comment by pjklauser@gmail.com on 6 Mar 2013 at 7:25

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

i have to wait a bit for the 2.5.0 to be released to maven central.

Original comment by pjklauser@gmail.com on 7 Mar 2013 at 5:57

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Here is the ticket for it to be added
https://code.google.com/p/protobuf/issues/detail?id=478

Original comment by kryptoni...@gmail.com on 7 Mar 2013 at 6:20

[GoogleCodeExporter]

i did an upgrade to 2.5.0 locally and replaced the netty ProtobufDecoder (with 
FastProtobufDecoder attached) to use the PARSER instead of the message builder. 
Unfortunately i couldn't prove that there was any significant performance 
improvement. Maybe this is because the WirePayload i'm serializing is not very 
complex - primarily just a ByteString.

Since i'd like to keep Netty & Protobuf libraries "in-line", i'd prefer to wait 
for Netty to upgrade their support for 2.5.0 and i'll upgrade to the new netty 
version and protobuf 2.5 at the same time.

It would be interesting if Netty developers could test / try to see if they can 
confirm the alleged performance increase of using PARSER.

I checked in my performance test client into the "demo" project.

If you really want the upgrade sooner, just say.

Original comment by pjklauser@gmail.com on 8 Mar 2013 at 8:03

Attachments:

• FastProtobufDecoder.java

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for looking into it.  I will check performance in my test case and get 
back with you.

Original comment by kryptoni...@gmail.com on 9 Mar 2013 at 7:28

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Upstream is open to a pull request:
https://github.com/netty/netty/issues/1138#issuecomment-14669707

Original comment by kryptoni...@gmail.com on 9 Mar 2013 at 8:21

[GoogleCodeExporter]

The change is merged in to netty 4.0.  If protobuf 2.5 is available then it 
will use the Parser, else it defaults back to the old behavior.

See this commit:
https://github.com/netty/netty/commit/c25513d5e1dd8eb9906989e83a1ce41495d3e6a9

This ticket can be blocked by ticket #16 (upgrade to netty 4.0) and becomes 
just changing you dependency to protobuf 2.5 if that sounds good to you.

Original comment by kryptoni...@gmail.com on 12 Mar 2013 at 12:26

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Upgraded to 4.0.0.Beta2 in 3.0.3 version.

Original comment by pjklauser@gmail.com on 16 Mar 2013 at 11:16

• Changed state: Fixed