From Atari to Sep: Unleashing the Power of Performance in Programming with Niels Rassmussen
The Modern .NET Show
Exploring the Fastest CSV Parser and the Concept of Mechanical Sympathy
This chapter explores the library called SEP, known for its incredible speed as a CSV parser. The speaker shares their fascination with its performance numbers and highlights the importance of mechanical sympathy in optimizing code for speed, diving into concepts like cache hierarchy, registers, and vectorization.
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Show Notes
Welcome to The Modern .NET Show! Formerly known as The .NET Core Podcast, we are the go-to podcast for all .NET developers worldwide and I am your host Jamie "GaProgMan" Taylor.
In this episode, I spoke with Niels Rasmussen about a CSV parser he wrote called Sep - one of the fastest CSV parses in .NET - and the the mysteries of performance optimization and mechanical sympathy.
"And I just got hooked by it. It has to be faster. It has to be faster than the fastest known to man. So that's what I worked on a lot and that's what I find fun. I'm very passionate about performance, mechanical sympathy, all that. That's really what I dig, things I read about and stuff like that." — Niels Rasmussen
Along the way we discuss the power of simplicity, the importance of understanding hardware intricacies, and the birth of Niels' lightning-fast CSV parsing library, Sep. From exploring different programming paradigms to dissecting the legendary Doom source code, this podcast is a must-listen for developers seeking to enhance their skills and unravel the secrets of software development
In preparation for this episode, Niels actually provided a veritable cornucopia of performance-related stuff - from important points to links to blog posts and other resources. There was no way that we could include them all in this episode, so I have gotten his permission and have been able to supply them as a PDF, linked at the end of the show notes page on the website. How cool is that!
So let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in dotnet new podcast and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET.
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Full Show Notes
The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-6/from-atari-to-sep-unleashing-the-power-of-performance-in-programming-with-niels-rassmussen
Useful Links
- Sep
- Niels' blog
- pi-hole
- Jellyfin
- The original source code for DOOM
- Game Engine Black Book: DOOM Edition
- NCsvPerf by Joel Verhagen
- CsvHelper
- Sylvan
- AVX
- hardware intrinsics
- Vector256
- Pack With Unsigned Saturation
- Extract Most Significant Bit
- BitOperations
- TrailingZeroCount
- Disasmo
- Peter Cordes
- pshufb
- SIMDized check which bytes are in a set
- Introduction to vectorization with Vector128 and Vector256 by Adam Sitnik
- BenchmarkDotNet
- 10x Performance with SIMD Vectorized Code in C#/.NET by Alexander Mutel
- Niels on GitHub
- Niels on Twitter
- Niels on Mastodon
- Introducing Sep
- Supporting the show:
- Getting in touch:
- Music created by Mono Memory Music, licensed to RJJ Software for use in The Modern .NET Show
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