Ruby SIMD String#upcase

Overview

simd_string_upcase is a Ruby gem that replaces the default String#upcase method a SIMD-optimized version for improved performance.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'simd_string_upcase'

And then execute:

bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

gem install simd_string_upcase

Usage

After installing the gem, simply require it in your Ruby code. The String#upcase method will be automatically overridden to use the SIMD-optimized version.

require 'simd_string_upcase'

str = "Hello, world!"
puts str.upcase             # This will use the SIMD-optimized version
puts str.original_upcase    # This will use the original CRuby implementation

How it Works

This gem provides a drop-in replacement for the String#upcase method in Ruby. It uses SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions to process multiple characters in a string simultaneously, resulting in faster length computation compared to the default implementation.

Performance

The SIMD-optimized methods can significantly improve performance, particularly for large strings. By utilizing the parallel processing capabilities of modern CPUs, these methods reduce the number of instructions needed to compute the length of a string.

Benchmarks

Using instruction set: AVX2

String Size	Implementation	Iterations per Second (i/s)	Comparison
Small (2,000 chars)	Ruby #upcase	37,196.0 i/s
	SIMD #upcase	514,957.2 i/s	13.84x faster
Medium (200,000 chars)	Ruby #upcase	358.7 i/s
	SIMD #upcase	5,372.2 i/s	14.98x faster
Large (2,000,000 chars)	Ruby #upcase	36.8 i/s
	SIMD #upcase	841.0 i/s	22.87x faster

Note: These benchmarks were run using Ruby 3.3 on macOS with a "Skylake" Intel Core i7 6820HQ CPU, which supports AVX2.

Compatibility

Note: This gem currently only works on x86 CPU architectures. Support for other architectures may be added in the future.

License

The gem is available as open-source under the terms of the MIT License.

marianposaceanu/simd_string_upcase