C++ vs Rust Performance Comparison Suite

A rigorous, measurement-based comparison of fundamental systems programming patterns in C++20 and Rust (stable).

See full article.

Patterns Compared

Pattern	C++ Approach	Rust Approach
RAII Resource Management	Smart pointers, RAII guards	Drop trait, ownership
Lock-Free Ring Buffer	std::atomic	crossbeam/std::sync::atomic
Async I/O Pipeline	C++20 coroutines	tokio
Zero-Copy String Processing	string_view, SSO	&str slices, Cow

Project Structure

├── cpp/
│   ├── CMakeLists.txt          # Top-level CMake config
│   ├── raii/                   # RAII pattern
│   ├── ringbuffer/             # Lock-free ring buffer
│   ├── async_io/               # Async I/O pipeline
│   └── string_processing/      # Zero-copy strings
├── rust/
│   ├── Cargo.toml              # Workspace config
│   ├── raii/                   # RAII pattern
│   ├── ringbuffer/             # Lock-free ring buffer
│   ├── async_io/               # Async I/O pipeline
│   └── string_processing/      # Zero-copy strings
├── results/                    # Benchmark results
├── scripts/
│   ├── run_benchmarks.py       # Main runner
│   └── generate_report.py      # Report generator
└── README.md

Requirements

C++

• CMake 3.20+
• GCC 12+ or Clang 15+ (C++20 support)
• Google Benchmark
• Valgrind (memory profiling)
• perf (Linux profiling)

Rust

• Rust 1.75+ (stable)
• Cargo

Analysis Tools

• Python 3.10+
• matplotlib, pandas, numpy

Building

C++

cd cpp
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

Rust

cd rust
cargo build --release

Running Benchmarks

# Run all benchmarks
python scripts/run_benchmarks.py --all

# Run specific pattern
python scripts/run_benchmarks.py --pattern ringbuffer

# Generate comparison report
python scripts/generate_report.py

Methodology

1. Warm-up: Each benchmark runs warm-up iterations to stabilize caches
2. Statistical rigor: Multiple samples, outlier detection, confidence intervals
3. Fair comparison: Same hardware, same workloads, same measurement methodology
4. Idiomatic code: Each implementation follows language best practices

Hardware Specification

Benchmarks should be run on consistent hardware. Results include:

• CPU model, cache sizes
• RAM speed
• OS/kernel version
• Compiler versions

License

MIT