Filikec's blog

Vectors make solution TLE?
By Filikec, history, 11 days ago, In English

In the latest contest I solved 2028C - Alice's Adventures in Cutting Cake in ~ O(nlog(n)). My first submission got TLE, which I found odd so I optimized it — tighter bound for BS and static array used for DP, which passed in 200ms.

Then I started adjusting my original solution and found out that if I use C++23 (GCC 14-64, msys2) instead of C++20 (GCC 13-64), the solution passes. If I create a single static vector, the solution is much faster.

C++23 (GCC 14-64, msys2): 291080726 — ~ 1400ms

C++20 (GCC 13-64): 291080768 — TLE

Single static vector: 291080651 — ~ 300ms

I have two questions:

1) Does anyone know why the compiler version changes the runtime so dramatically and how to prevent it?

2) Since creation of a vector is linear in its size, why is the runtime increased so much?

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11 days ago, # |
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Seems like the small vector is the big slowdown here, after I replaced the vll(2) into an array<ll, 2>, it sped up by a large magnitude. I think it's well known that small vectors can cause this, probably why you should use array<type, size> for small, fixed dimensions

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    11 days ago, # ^ |
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    I see, I suppose that could be since vectors are reserving more size than they need to?

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      11 days ago, # ^ |
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      It's pretty likely that's what happened, as when I tested, the solution using array<> uses only 4000 kb of memory, while the vector solution used 12000kb

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        11 days ago, # ^ |
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        so I suppose the other compiler is just better at creating small vectors

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      11 days ago, # ^ |
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      vector performs dynamic allocation, and it has to maintain the pointer to the allocated memory, the size of the vector, and the capacity of the vector. This is a huge overhead compared to an array where all it requires is a fixed size memory directly in place.

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        11 days ago, # ^ |
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        Right, I expected the overhead to make it like 3x times slower but it is almost 10x slower

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11 days ago, # |
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When you allocate 2d (n * 2) vector inside function it probably doesn't allocate a continuous block of memory, but runs n allocations on heap which is expensive + the resulting memory layout is not cache-friendly. For global vector you at least do these n allocations only once.

Also there's no reason to use vector here over a vanilla array, since you already know the size beforehand.

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11 days ago, # |
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For C++20 option, Codeforces uses g++ v.13.2 (winlibs), which uses MSVCRT. It is pretty bad, especially at the memory allocation. Your solution even passes, if we submit it on g++ v.7.3.0 (32 bit): 291101988.

For C++23 option, Codeforces uses g++ v.14.2 (msys2), which uses UCRT64, which is better than MSVCRT.

For additional reading: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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