Benchmark - Protcol Buffers 3 vs Jackson JSON
This is a simple comparison of performance and size between Jackson (w/ Afterburner) and Protocol Buffers version 3.
I came across an article comparing the two, showing PB with worse performance, in some tests nearly 2-times slower.
My initial reaction was: this can't be correct. When browsing the benchmark's source code I noticed the PB version was adversely impacted by converting JodaTime to / from string, while Jackson was using a more efficient serialization. The profiler showed JodaTime conversion was taking up most of the time, making PB look far worse.
Usage
./gradlew run
Example Run
JDK 8
Macbook Pro Retina (mid-2012)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
loops = 10
iters = 10,000
times in milliseconds
sizes in bytes (protobuf) and characters (jackson)
test min max avg
-----------------------------------------------------------------
with 0 children
jackson serialization 7.3 71.3 19.1
jackson deserialization 13.6 95.6 27.2
afterburner serialization 8.0 36.6 14.5
afterburner deserialization 13.5 15.6 13.9
protobuf serialization 1.2 12.4 3.1
protobuf deserialization 1.7 12.5 4.0
encoded sizes:
jackson 104
afterburner 104
protobuf 26
with 8 children
jackson serialization 53.3 78.7 62.5
jackson deserialization 110.1 130.9 114.9
afterburner serialization 53.5 57.5 54.7
afterburner deserialization 109.8 115.4 112.7
protobuf serialization 10.2 82.1 19.0
protobuf deserialization 19.3 35.2 25.1
encoded sizes:
jackson 949
afterburner 949
protobuf 258
with 16 children
jackson serialization 102.2 111.3 105.8
jackson deserialization 210.4 218.6 214.7
afterburner serialization 102.2 108.5 105.6
afterburner deserialization 210.8 229.2 217.2
protobuf serialization 19.5 23.2 20.3
protobuf deserialization 37.6 47.6 40.3
encoded sizes:
jackson 1804
afterburner 1804
protobuf 497
with 32 children
jackson serialization 198.2 211.6 204.0
jackson deserialization 403.9 427.1 416.1
afterburner serialization 198.4 244.4 212.8
afterburner deserialization 407.0 439.5 420.2
protobuf serialization 38.0 41.4 39.5
protobuf deserialization 73.8 84.0 76.9
encoded sizes:
jackson 3516
afterburner 3516
protobuf 977
Example Objects
JSON-encoded object with 1 child (indented for readability): 207 characters
{
"num64": 9223372036854775807,
"flag": true,
"str": "parent",
"type": "FOO",
"children": [
{
"num64": 9223372036854775807,
"flag": true,
"str": "child 1",
"type": "FOO",
"children": null,
"num32": 2147483647
}
],
"num32": 2147483647
}
Protobuf-encoded object with 1 child (byte array): 55 bytes
{
\x08, \x01, \x18, \xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \x07, \x20, \xff,
\xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \x7f, \x2a, \x06,
'p', 'a', 'r', 'e', 'n', 't', \x52, \x1b, \x08, \x01, \x18,
\xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \x07, \x20, \xff, \xff, \xff, \xff,
\xff, \xff, \xff, \xff, \x7f, \x2a, \x07, 'c', 'h', 'i', 'l',
'd', ' ', '1'
}