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1️⃣🐝🏎️ The One Billion Row Challenge in Object Pascal

Delphi Community Unofficial Free Pacal

This is the repository that will coordinate the 1 Billion Row Challenge for Object Pascal.

The One Billion Row Challenge (1BRC) is a fun exploration of how far modern Object Pascal can be pushed for aggregating one billion rows from a text file. Grab all your threads, reach out to SIMD, or pull any other trick, and create the fastest implementation for solving this task!

1BRC

The text file contains temperature values for a range of weather stations. Each row is one measurement in the format <string: station name>;<double: measurement>, with the measurement value having exactly one fractional digit. Rows are separated by a single line feed equal of LF (ascii 10) for consistency with the original challenge - and not CR+LF (ascii 13+10) any more. The following shows ten rows as an example:

Hamburg;12.0
Bulawayo;8.9
Palembang;38.8
St. John's;15.2
Cracow;12.6
Bridgetown;26.9
Istanbul;6.2
Roseau;34.4
Conakry;31.2
Istanbul;23.0

The task is to write an Object Pascal program which reads the file, calculates the min, mean, and max temperature value per weather station, and emits the results on STDOUT like this (i.e., sorted alphabetically by station name, and the result values per station in the format <min>/<mean>/<max>, rounded to one fractional digit, with the decimal separator being a period ., and for that you can chose one of the options presented in the Rounding Section or implement your own that is consistent with the options provided.):

{Abha=-23.0/18.0/59.2, Abidjan=-16.2/26.0/67.3, Abéché=-10.0/29.4/69.0, Accra=-10.1/26.4/66.4, Addis Ababa=-23.7/16.0/67.0, Adelaide=-27.8/17.3/58.5, ...}

Entering The Challenge

Submissions will be via a PR (Pull Request) to this repository.
The challenge will run from the 10th of March until the 10th of May, 2024.

When creating your entry, please do as follows:

  1. Create a folder under entries with your first initial and last name, e.g., for Gustavo Carreno: entries/gcarreno.
  2. If you're worried about anonymity, because the Internet stinks, feel free to use a fictional one: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, James Logan, Peter Parker, Diana of Themyscira. Your pick!
  3. Create a README.md with some content about your approach, e.g., entries/gcarreno/README.md.
  4. Put all your code under entries/<your name>/src, e.g., entries/gcarreno/src.
  5. Send your binary to the bin folder off the root of this repository.
  6. If you need to provide a custom .gitignore for something not present in the main one, please do.
  7. Read the CONTRIBUTING.md file for more details.

This challenge is mainly to allow us to learn something new. This means that copying code from others will be allowed, under these conditions:

  1. You can only use pure Object Pascal with no calls to any operating system's API or external C/C++ libraries.
    There's been a bit of confusion about this restriction.
  • To clear that out: You can use any package/custom code you want.
  • As long as it compiles cross-platform and itself is only pure Object Pascal.
  • Anything from the Jedi Project or even mORMmot ( or anything else ), if it compiles, runs cross-platform it's allowed.
  1. The code must have some sort of mention/attribution to the original author, in case you've used someone else's code.
  2. It's not a blatant copy just for the sake of submission.
  3. It adds something of value, not just a different code formatting.
  4. All code should be formatted with the IDE's default formatting tool.

IMPORTANT
This challenge can be entered even if you only have access to the Community Edition of RAD Studio. I have a Windows VM, with RAD Studio installed, that will do the necessary cross compilation into my Linux host.

Submit your implementation and become part of the leader board!

Rounding

With the help of this magnificent community, we were able to finally get to a rounding solution that works.

This means that I'm encouraging everyone to use the code that is now in the Baseline.Common unit.
I do have to make crystal clear that using that code is an option, one that you can always opt out of.
But if you do opt in, just include that unit in your entry and job's a done.

Generating the measurements.txt

NOTE
We now have both a Lazarus version and a Delphi version of the generator for both 32b and 64b.

In order to produce the One Billion Rows of text, we are providing the source code for the official generator, so we all have the same entry data.

Parameter Description
-h or --help Writes this help message and exits
-v or --version Writes the version and exits
-i or --input-file <filename> The file containing the Weather Stations
-o or --output-file <filename> The file that will contain the generated lines
-n or --line-count <number> The amount of lines to be generated ( Can use 1_000_000_000 )
-4 or --400stations Only 400 weather stations in output file

Baseline

NOTE
This is still a bit in flux, still needing to get the Delphi version done.

In order to verify the official output, we are providing the source code for the official baseline.

Parameter Description
-h or --help Writes this help message and exits
-v or --version Writes the version and exits
-i or --input-file <filename> The file containing the 1 billion rows

Verify Input File

You can verify the generated measurements.txt with a SHA256 utility:

Linux

$ sha256sum ./data/measurements.txt

Windows (Command Line)

C:> CertUtil -hashfile .\data\measurements.txt SHA256

Windows (PowerShell)

Get-FileHash .\data\measurements.txt -Algorithm SHA256

Expected SHA256 hash: 2b48bc2fa0b82d748925a820f43f75df01cc06df7447c7571e52d3962e675960

Verify Output File

There is now a Delphi version of the baseline. This means that we now have an official way of generating a valid output on both sides of the fence.

With this, we now have the official hash: 4256d19d3e134d79cc6f160d428a1d859ce961167bd01ca528daca8705163910

There's also an archived version of the baseline output

Small File Hashes

For easier comparison with the baseline, here are the hashes for different generated row counts:

Lines Input File Hash Output File Hash
1_000 0be4844a2417c08a85a44b26509bbe6868a6f65d0e0d087d3f9ceedc02f5ceaa d42c37ca405f230e91dd0a75e6741dbbbcddd2338963ea0f0e727cf90ecbd7e7
10_000 447380628ca25b1c9901c2e62e01591f2e2f794d2888934a5e9d4a67d72346a5 b4dd36d80a63fefdccbff50ffaaef7e2092034935c729b3330569c7c7f7351fc
100_000 dd3a4821e91de82e44f17f65b1951af8a21652b92c20a7e53a1fa02ea6e5fbd2 c9e50d46bba327727bf4b412ec0401e0c2e59c9035b94b288e15631ca621cb52
1_000_000 c2955973c3db29bf544655c11d2d3c7ac902c9f65014026b210bd25eb1876c0c 5fedbd9811660ee3423f979a0c854ec8b70da3e804170bc39bcc400c94f93bc0
10_000_000 90193d314e991f7789258c8b6b06c493a4d624991e203b12343c2a8ce1d0c7fd 2f3a6383b3bc83a9ad53fc0773de2da57bd4add8a51662cdb86bfca502d276a3
100_000_000 f55384da4646a0c77a1d5dd94a58f8430c5956fe180cedcb17b4425fe5389a39 7e8339b5d268fa400a93887b7a1140ac1adf683a8e837e6274fd71e383c26c6b

Differences From Original

I've decided that I would want this challenge to be turned way up to 11!

This means that there are some differences from the original.

The original results are calculated on a smaller set of weather stations: 400.
While I haven't tabulated how many reside on the input file, we do not limit it to any number as we use the full ~40K stations present on data/weather_stations.csv to generate the input file.

Another difference is the machines these are run on.
I'm using my own machine, with the specs mentioned on the Results section bellow.
I'm also allowing the use of the full 32 threads that my machine provides, where the original challenge limits it to 8.
The original challenge also has a second results table with 10K stations and the use of all 64 threads.

With all this said, comparison with the original challenge should be made with this in mind.

Results

These are the results from running all entries into the challenge on my personal computer:

  • Ubuntu 23.10 64b
  • Ryzen 9 5950x 16 cores
  • 32GB RAM
  • 250GB SSD
  • 1TB HDD
# Result (m:s.ms) Compiler Submitter Notes Certificates
1 0:1.261 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Arnaud Bouchez Using mORMot2, 32 threads
2 0:1.950 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 O Coddo Using SCL, 32 threads
3 0:2.101 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Georges Hatem Using mORMot2, 32 threads
4 0:5.248 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Hartmut Grosser Using 32 thread
5 0:7.363 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Benito van der Zander Using 32 threads
6 0:9.627 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 G Klark Using 32 threads
7 0:13.321 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Székely Balázs Using 32 threads
8 0:18.062 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Lurendrejer Aksen Using 32 threads
9 1:9.354 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Richard Lawson Using 1 thread
10 2:24.787 lazarus-3.99, fpc-3.3.1 Iwan Kelaiah Using 1 thread
11 6:2.343 delphi 12.1 Brian Fire Using 8 threads
12 6:53.788 delphi 12.1 David Cornelius Using 1 thread
13 8:37.975 delphi 12.1 Daniel Töpfl Using 1 thread

NOTE

After some tests performed by @paweld, it makes no sense to have an HDD run. I've removed that from the results

Evaluating Results

Each contender is run 10 times in a row for both SSD and HDD using hyperfine for the time taking.
The mean value of the 10 runs is the result for that contender and will be added to the results table above.
The min and max values are discarded and the remaining 8 values are then used to calculate the average.
The exact same measurements.txt file is used for evaluating all contenders.

Prize

This is being run for bragging rights only and the fun of such a challenge.

FAQ

Q: Can I copy code from other submissions?
A: Yes, you can. The primary focus of the challenge is about learning something new, rather than "winning". When you do so, please give credit to the relevant source submissions. Please don't re-submit other entries with no or only trivial improvements.

Q: What is the encoding of the measurements.txt file?
A: The file is encoded with UTF-8.

Q: Which operating system is used for evaluation?
A: Ubuntu 23.10 64b.

Honour Mentions

I'd like to thank @paweld for taking us from my miserable 20m attempt, to a whopping ~25s, beating the Python script by about 4 and a half minutes.
I'd like to thank @mobius for taking the time to provide the Delphi version of the generator.
I'd like to thank @dtpfl for his invaluable work on maintaining the README.md file up to date with everything.
I'd like to thank Székely Balázs for providing many patches to make everything compliant with the original challenge.
I'd like to thank @corneliusdavid for giving some of the information files a once over and making things more legible and clear.
I'd like to thank Mr. Packman, aka O, for clearing the fog around the rounding issues.
I'd like to thank Georges for providing us with the Delphi version of baseline.

Links

The original repository: https://github.com/gunnarmorling/1brc
I found out about it by watching this video about an attempt in Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYng524S-MA
The blog post in question: https://www.bytesizego.com/blog/one-billion-row-challenge-go

License

This code base is available under the MIT License.

Code of Conduct

Be excellent to each other!
More than winning, the purpose of this challenge is to have fun and learn something new.