Go Value Copy Costs

Generally speaking, the cost to copy a value is proportional to the size of the value. However, value sizes are not the only factor determining value copy costs. Different CPU models and compiler versions may specially optimize value copying for values with specific sizes.

In practice, we can view struct values with less than 5 fields and with sizes not larger than four native words as small-size values. The costs of copying small-size values are small.

For the standard Go compiler, except values of large-size struct and array types, other types in Go are all small-size types.

To avoid large value copy costs in argument passing and channel value send and receive operations, we should try to avoid using large-size struct and array types as function and method parameter types (including method receiver types) and channel element types. We can use pointer types whose base types are large-size types instead for such scenarios.

On the other hand, we should also consider the fact that too many pointers will increase the pressure of garbage collectors at run time. So whether large-size struct and array types or their corresponding pointer types should be used relies on specific circumstances.

Generally, in practice, we seldom use pointer types whose base types are slice types, map types, channel types, function types, string types and interface types. The costs of copying values of these assumed base types are very small.

We should also try to avoid using the two-iteration-variable forms to iterate array and slice elements if the element types are large-size types, for each element value will be copied to the second iteration variable in the iteration process.

package main

import "testing"

type S [12]int64
var sX = make([]S, 1000)
var sY = make([]S, 1000)
var sZ = make([]S, 1000)
var sumX, sumY, sumZ int64

func Benchmark_Loop(b *testing.B) {
	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		sumX = 0
		for j := 0; j < len(sX); j++ {
			sumX += sX[j][0]
		}
	}
}

func Benchmark_Range_OneIterVar(b *testing.B) {
	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		sumY = 0
		for j := range sY {
			sumY += sY[j][0]
		}
	}
}

func Benchmark_Range_TwoIterVar(b *testing.B) {
	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
		sumZ = 0
		for _, v := range sZ {
			sumZ += v[0]
		}
	}
}

Benchmark_Loop-4             424342 2708 ns/op
Benchmark_Range_OneIterVar-4 407905 2808 ns/op
Benchmark_Range_TwoIterVar-4 214860 3915 ns/op

We can find that the efficiency of the two-iteration-variable form is much lower than the other two. But please note that, some compilers might make special optimizations to remove the performance differences between these forms. The above benchmark result is based on the standard Go compiler v1.23.n.

• About Go 101 - why this book is written.
• Acknowledgments

• An Introduction of Go - why Go is worth learning.
• The Go Toolchain - how to compile and run Go programs.

• Become Familiar With Go Code
  • Introduction of Source Code Elements
  • Keywords and Identifiers
  • Basic Types and Their Value Literals
  • Constants and Variables - also introduces untyped values and type deductions.
  • Common Operators - also introduces more type deduction rules.
  • Function Declarations and Calls
  • Code Packages and Package Imports
  • Expressions, Statements and Simple Statements
  • Basic Control Flows
  • Goroutines, Deferred Function Calls and Panic/Recover

• Go Type System
  • Go Type System Overview - a must read to master Go programming.
  • Pointers
  • Structs
  • Value Parts - to gain a deeper understanding into Go values.
  • Arrays, Slices and Maps - first-class citizen container types.
  • Strings
  • Functions - function types and values, including variadic functions.
  • Channels - the Go way to do concurrency synchronizations.
  • Methods
  • Interfaces - value boxes used to do reflection and polymorphism.
  • Type Embedding - type extension in the Go way.
  • Type-Unsafe Pointers
  • Generics - use and read composite types
  • Reflections - the reflect standard package.

• Some Special Topics
  • Line Break Rules
  • More About Deferred Function Calls
  • Some Panic/Recover Use Cases
  • Explain Panic/Recover Mechanism in Detail - also explains exiting phases of function calls.
  • Code Blocks and Identifier Scopes
  • Expression Evaluation Orders
  • Value Copy Costs in Go
  • Bounds Check Elimination

• Concurrent Programming
  • Concurrency Synchronization Overview
  • Channel Use Cases
  • How to Gracefully Close Channels
  • Other Concurrency Synchronization Techniques - the sync standard package.
  • Atomic Operations - the sync/atomic standard package.
  • Memory Order Guarantees in Go
  • Common Concurrent Programming Mistakes

• Memory Related
  • Memory Blocks
  • Memory Layouts
  • Memory Leaking Scenarios

• Some Summaries
  • Some Simple Summaries
  • nil in Go
  • Value Conversion, Assignment and Comparison Rules
  • Syntax/Semantics Exceptions
  • Go FAQ 101

• More Go Related Topics