Dav1d Performance Boost: Cacheline Alignment Optimizations
2025-05-26
A developer significantly improved the performance of the Dav1d video decoder by optimizing the memory alignment of its structures. By rearranging structure members and using more compact data types, memory fragmentation was reduced, achieving optimal 8-byte alignment on 64-bit processors. Benchmark results showed a roughly 0.5% and 2.8% reduction in decoding time for 1080p and 4K videos, respectively. This optimization highlights the importance of meticulous memory management for performance gains and offers valuable insights for optimizing other C/C++ projects.