Table of Contents

PerfUtils Documentation

This documentation is for the KZDev.PerfUtils package, which contains the MemoryStreamSlim, StringBuilderCache and InterlockedOps classes. The following sections provide insight and information on usage, how the classes operate, and information on performance benchmarks. For a full API reference, see the API Reference.

MemoryStreamSlim

The standard MemoryStream is a class in the .NET Class Library that represents a stream of bytes stored in memory. It is a very useful class for working with in-memory data, but it has some limitations. One of the main limitations is that it uses a single byte array to store the data, which can result in a lot of garbage collection pressure when working with large amounts of memory or cases where many MemoryStream instances are created and disposed of frequently.

The MemoryStreamSlim class is specifically tailored to improve performance in cases where using MemoryStream can result in a lot of GC pressure but it also has better overall throughput performance than the standard MemoryStream in most use cases.

This documentation provides information on how to use the MemoryStreamSlim class, how it works, and how it can help improve performance in your applications.

The Memory Stream topic discusses high-level how to use the MemoryStreamSlim class, its features, and how it works internally.

The Memory Management topic provides some insight into how the memory is managed and the options you have to control that management.

The Memory Monitoring topic discusses how you can monitor memory usage and allocations with MemoryStreamSlim using the Metrics and Events features of the .NET runtime.

The Benchmarks topic covers the benchmarks used to examine the performance benefits provided by the MemoryStreamSlim class.

StringBuilderCache

StringBuilder is a mutable string class that can be used to build strings more memory efficiently than repeated concatenation. However, the StringBuilder class itself is frequently allocated and deallocated when used as well as the internal buffers used, which can cause memory pressure in high-throughput scenarios.

The StringBuilderCache class is a static class that provides a thread-safe cache of StringBuilder instances to reduce the number of allocations and deallocations of StringBuilder objects.

The StringBuilderCache document topic discusses how to use the StringBuilderCache class and how it can help improve performance in your applications.

The Benchmarks topic covers the benchmarks used to examine the performance benefits provided by the StringBuilderCache class.

Interlocked Operations

The Interlocked class in the .NET Class Library provides a set of atomic operations that can be used to perform thread-safe operations on integer types. These operations are very useful for scenarios where multiple threads need to update a shared variable without interfering with each other.

The InterlockedOps class provides a set of static helper methods that provide additional functionality that is not currently available in the Interlocked class.

These include operations such as:

  • Xor : Exclusive OR operation on any integer types.
  • ClearBits : Clear bits on any integer types.
  • SetBits : Set bits on any integer types.
  • ConditionAnd : Conditionally update bits using an AND operation on any integer types.
  • ConditionOr : Conditionally update bits using an OR operation on any integer types.
  • ConditionXor : Conditionally update bits using an XOR operation on any integer types.
  • ConditionClearBits : Conditionally clear bits on any integer types.
  • ConditionSetBits : Conditionally set bits on any integer types.

The Interlocked Operations topic discusses these operations in more detail.

Future Features

The roadmap plan for this package is to add several additional helpful performance-focused utilities. These will be forthcoming as time permits.