Benchmark comparing performance of Google's protobuf library version 2 vs. version 3

Results

Here is the results I've got when running tests on a typical desktop Core i7 computer running Ubuntu 14.04:

Message serialization/deserialization only

protobuf's version	result (ms)
2	1304
3	1321

Full message construction/destruction

protobuf's version	result (ms)
2	2588
3	3059
3 (with arena)	2618

Raw benchmarks' output

$ ./benchmark-v3 50000 50
version: 3000000
only serialization/deserialization cycle: 1321 milliseconds
full construction/destruction cycle: 3059 milliseconds
full construction/destruction cycle with arena (protobuf 3 only): 2618 milliseconds

$ ./benchmark-v2 50000 50
version: 2006001
only serialization/deserialization cycle: 1304 milliseconds
full construction/destruction cycle: 2588 milliseconds

Libraries used

For tests following versions of the protobuf library were used:

• Protocol Buffers v2.6.1
• Protocol Buffers v3.0.0-alpha-1

Building

This is a tipical CMake project, which does not have any external dependences, i.e. all needed protobuf libraries will be downloaded and build automatically. To build this project you need a compiler that supports C++11 features, compilation was tested on GCC 4.8.2 and clang 3.5.

$ git clone https://github.com/thekvs/protobuf-2-vs-3-benchmark.git
$ mkdir /path/to/build-root/
$ cd /path/to/build-root/
$ cmake /path/to/protobuf-2-vs-3-benchmark -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
$ make