Any faster way of copying arrays in C#?
Use Buffer.BlockCopy. Its entire purpose is to perform fast (see Buffer):
This class provides better performance for manipulating primitive types than similar methods in the System.Array class.
Admittedly, I haven't done any benchmarks, but that's the documentation. It also works on multidimensional arrays; just make sure that you're always specifying how many bytes to copy, not how many elements, and also that you're working on a primitive array.
Also, I have not tested this, but you might be able to squeeze a bit more performance out of the system if you bind a delegate to System.Buffer.memcpyimpl
and call that directly. The signature is:
internal static unsafe void memcpyimpl(byte* src, byte* dest, int len)
It does require pointers, but I believe it's optimized for the highest speed possible, and so I don't think there's any way to get faster than that, even if you had assembly at hand.
Update:
Due to requests (and to satisfy my curiosity), I tested this:
using System;using System.Diagnostics;using System.Reflection;unsafe delegate void MemCpyImpl(byte* src, byte* dest, int len);static class Temp{ //There really should be a generic CreateDelegate<T>() method... -___- static MemCpyImpl memcpyimpl = (MemCpyImpl)Delegate.CreateDelegate( typeof(MemCpyImpl), typeof(Buffer).GetMethod("memcpyimpl", BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.NonPublic)); const int COUNT = 32, SIZE = 32 << 20; //Use different buffers to help avoid CPU cache effects static byte[] aSource = new byte[SIZE], aTarget = new byte[SIZE], bSource = new byte[SIZE], bTarget = new byte[SIZE], cSource = new byte[SIZE], cTarget = new byte[SIZE]; static unsafe void TestUnsafe() { Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); fixed (byte* pSrc = aSource) fixed (byte* pDest = aTarget) for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) memcpyimpl(pSrc, pDest, SIZE); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Buffer.memcpyimpl: {0:N0} ticks", sw.ElapsedTicks); } static void TestBlockCopy() { Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); sw.Start(); for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) Buffer.BlockCopy(bSource, 0, bTarget, 0, SIZE); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Buffer.BlockCopy: {0:N0} ticks", sw.ElapsedTicks); } static void TestArrayCopy() { Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); sw.Start(); for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) Array.Copy(cSource, 0, cTarget, 0, SIZE); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Array.Copy: {0:N0} ticks", sw.ElapsedTicks); } static void Main(string[] args) { for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { TestArrayCopy(); TestBlockCopy(); TestUnsafe(); Console.WriteLine(); } }}
The results:
Buffer.BlockCopy: 469,151 ticksArray.Copy: 469,972 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 496,541 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 421,011 ticksArray.Copy: 430,694 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 410,933 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 425,112 ticksArray.Copy: 420,839 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 411,520 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 424,329 ticksArray.Copy: 420,288 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 405,598 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 422,410 ticksArray.Copy: 427,826 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 414,394 ticks
Now change the order:
Array.Copy: 419,750 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 408,919 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 419,774 ticksArray.Copy: 430,529 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 412,148 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 424,900 ticksArray.Copy: 424,706 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 427,861 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 421,929 ticksArray.Copy: 420,556 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 421,541 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 436,430 ticksArray.Copy: 435,297 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 432,505 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 441,493 ticks
Now change the order again:
Buffer.memcpyimpl: 430,874 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 429,730 ticksArray.Copy: 432,746 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 415,943 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 423,809 ticksArray.Copy: 428,703 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 421,270 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 428,262 ticksArray.Copy: 434,940 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 423,506 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 427,220 ticksArray.Copy: 431,606 ticksBuffer.memcpyimpl: 422,900 ticksBuffer.BlockCopy: 439,280 ticksArray.Copy: 432,649 ticks
or, in other words: they're very competitive; as a general rule, memcpyimpl
is fastest, but it's not necessarily worth worrying about.
If running on .NET Core, you may consider using source.AsSpan().CopyTo(destination)
(beware on Mono though).
Method | Job | Runtime | Mean | Error | StdDev | Ratio | RatioSD |---------------- |----- |-------- |----------:|----------:|----------:|------:|--------:| ArrayCopy | Clr | Clr | 60.08 ns | 0.8231 ns | 0.7699 ns | 1.00 | 0.00 | SpanCopy | Clr | Clr | 99.31 ns | 0.4895 ns | 0.4339 ns | 1.65 | 0.02 | BufferBlockCopy | Clr | Clr | 61.34 ns | 0.5963 ns | 0.5578 ns | 1.02 | 0.01 | | | | | | | | | ArrayCopy | Core | Core | 63.33 ns | 0.6843 ns | 0.6066 ns | 1.00 | 0.00 | SpanCopy | Core | Core | 47.41 ns | 0.5399 ns | 0.5050 ns | 0.75 | 0.01 | BufferBlockCopy | Core | Core | 59.89 ns | 0.4713 ns | 0.3936 ns | 0.94 | 0.01 | | | | | | | | | ArrayCopy | Mono | Mono | 149.82 ns | 1.6466 ns | 1.4596 ns | 1.00 | 0.00 | SpanCopy | Mono | Mono | 347.87 ns | 2.0589 ns | 1.9259 ns | 2.32 | 0.02 | BufferBlockCopy | Mono | Mono | 61.52 ns | 1.1691 ns | 1.0364 ns | 0.41 | 0.01 |