SIMD-Accelerated File Comparison

This project implements a file comparison utility similar to Linux/macOS cmp, but using SIMD instructions from Rust's standard library to accelerate the comparison.

Requirements

• Rust nightly (needed for std::simd)
• Standard build tools

Features

• SIMD-accelerated file comparison for better performance using Rust's std::simd
• Command-line interface similar to the standard cmp utility
• Comprehensive benchmarks to demonstrate performance gains
• Cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, macOS)

Running the Application

cargo run -- file1 file2       # Compare two files
cargo run -- file1 file2 -s    # Silent mode - only return exit code

Installation

Pre-built Binaries

You can download pre-built binaries for Windows, Linux, and macOS from the Releases page.

Building from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/abbychau/simd-cmp.git
cd simd-cmp

# Build with cargo
cargo build --release

# The binary will be available at target/release/simd-cmp

Performance

The SIMD-accelerated file comparison is significantly faster than the standard cmp utility, especially for larger files. Benchmarks show a performance improvement of roughly 4x for files larger than 1MB.

~/simd-cmp/target/release > hyperfine 'cmp a2.txt b2.txt' --warmup 1
Benchmark 1: cmp a2.txt b2.txt
  Time (mean ± σ):      1.969 s ±  0.024 s    [User: 1.779 s, System: 0.157 s]
  Range (min … max):    1.945 s …  2.021 s    10 runs

~/simd-cmp/target/release > hyperfine './simd-cmp a2.txt b2.txt' --warmup 1
Benchmark 1: ./simd-cmp a2.txt b2.txt
  Time (mean ± σ):     542.2 ms ±  51.9 ms    [User: 105.5 ms, System: 403.4 ms]
  Range (min … max):   507.1 ms … 682.4 ms    10 runs

~/simd-cmp/target/release > hyperfine 'cmp a.txt b.txt' --warmup 1
Benchmark 1: cmp a.txt b.txt
  Time (mean ± σ):     668.5 ms ±  10.8 ms    [User: 592.1 ms, System: 53.3 ms]
  Range (min … max):   656.5 ms … 685.6 ms    10 runs

~/simd-cmp/target/release > hyperfine './simd-cmp a.txt b.txt' --warmup 1
Benchmark 1: ./simd-cmp a.txt b.txt
  Time (mean ± σ):     179.6 ms ±   3.1 ms    [User: 35.8 ms, System: 133.2 ms]
  Range (min … max):   175.9 ms … 186.2 ms    15 runs

CI/CD

This project uses GitHub Actions for continuous integration and deployment. The workflow automatically builds and tests the application on Windows, Linux, and macOS. When a new tag is pushed, it creates a release with pre-built binaries for all supported platforms.

Creating a Release

To create a new release:

1. Tag the commit you want to release: git tag -a v1.0.0 -m "Release v1.0.0"
2. Push the tag: git push origin v1.0.0
3. GitHub Actions will automatically build the binaries and create a release