# Bring Intel x86 simd sort library to Julia

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bring-intel-x86-simd-sort-library-to-julia/131719>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** package\
**Created:** [August 19, 2025, 8:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bring-intel-x86-simd-sort-library-to-julia/131719 "2025-08-19T20:00:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![giordano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/giordano/32/2166_2.png) [@giordano](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/giordano)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2025, 8:54pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/bring-intel-x86-simd-sort-library-to-julia/131719/3 "2025-08-19T20:54:17Z")

</div>

I’d start by checking whether that’s worth at all

```cxx
#include "x86simdsort.h"

extern "C" void qsort_float(float *arr, size_t size) {
    x86simdsort::qsort(arr, size, true);
}

extern "C" void qsort_double(double *arr, size_t size) {
    x86simdsort::qsort(arr, size, true);
}

```

Compiled with

```sh
g++ -o libsort.so -Wall -O3 -march=native -shared sort.c -L ../builddir -lx86simdsortcpp -Wl,-rpath,../builddir

```

Then

```julia-auto
julia> using BenchmarkTools, Random

julia> qsort!(x::Vector{Cfloat}) = @ccall "./libsort.so".qsort_float(x::Ptr{Cfloat}, length(x)::Csize_t)::Cvoid
qsort! (generic function with 1 method)

julia> qsort!(x::Vector{Cdouble}) = @ccall "./libsort.so".qsort_double(x::Ptr{Cdouble}, length(x)::Csize_t)::Cvoid
qsort! (generic function with 2 methods)

julia> @benchmark qsort!(x) setup=(Random.seed!(123); x = rand(Float32, 2 ^ 20)) evals=1
BenchmarkTools.Trial: 140 samples with 1 evaluation per sample.
 Range (min … max): 26.242 ms … 38.469 ms ┊ GC (min … max): 0.00% … 0.00%
 Time (median): 36.768 ms ┊ GC (median): 0.00%
 Time (mean ± σ): 34.580 ms ± 4.452 ms ┊ GC (mean ± σ): 0.00% ± 0.00%

  █ ▁ ▁▃ ▂ ▁ ▂
  █▇▃▁▃▁▁▁▁▁▃▁▁▃▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▃▁▁▁▃▃▁▁▁▁▁▁▃▁▁▁▁▃▁▁▄▃▅█▅██▇███▆█▄ ▃
  26.2 ms Histogram: frequency by time 38.4 ms <

 Memory estimate: 0 bytes, allocs estimate: 0.

julia> @benchmark sort!(x) setup=(Random.seed!(123); x = rand(Float32, 2 ^ 20)) evals=1
BenchmarkTools.Trial: 602 samples with 1 evaluation per sample.
 Range (min … max): 4.731 ms … 11.296 ms ┊ GC (min … max): 0.00% … 0.00%
 Time (median): 6.740 ms ┊ GC (median): 0.00%
 Time (mean ± σ): 6.880 ms ± 1.054 ms ┊ GC (mean ± σ): 0.05% ± 0.62%

    ▃ ▅ █▄ ▁▂▄
  ▃▇█▄▁▃▁▁▁▁▂▁▃▃▅▆█▆▄▇▇███▆▅▄▃▄▃▄▅▆▇█████▄▁▁▁▃▁▁▁▁▁▂▁▁▁▂▁▁▁▃ ▄
  4.73 ms Histogram: frequency by time 9.79 ms <

 Memory estimate: 4.01 MiB, allocs estimate: 6.

julia> @benchmark qsort!(x) setup=(Random.seed!(123); x = rand(Float64, 2 ^ 20)) evals=1
BenchmarkTools.Trial: 88 samples with 1 evaluation per sample.
 Range (min … max): 44.550 ms … 66.835 ms ┊ GC (min … max): 0.00% … 0.00%
 Time (median): 55.813 ms ┊ GC (median): 0.00%
 Time (mean ± σ): 54.247 ms ± 4.553 ms ┊ GC (mean ± σ): 0.00% ± 0.00%

                                        ▆██▅▂ ▃
  ▄▄██▄▄▄▁▁▄▅▁▁▁▁▁▄▁▁▄▁▄▁▁▁▄▄▁▅▁▁▁▄▁▄▄▄▅█████▇█▄▅▄▅▄▁▄▁▄▄▁▁▁▄ ▁
  44.5 ms Histogram: frequency by time 61.3 ms <

 Memory estimate: 0 bytes, allocs estimate: 0.

julia> @benchmark sort!(x) setup=(Random.seed!(123); x = rand(Float64, 2 ^ 20)) evals=1
BenchmarkTools.Trial: 308 samples with 1 evaluation per sample.
 Range (min … max): 9.046 ms … 17.033 ms ┊ GC (min … max): 1.97% … 1.97%
 Time (median): 14.814 ms ┊ GC (median): 1.94%
 Time (mean ± σ): 14.138 ms ± 2.139 ms ┊ GC (mean ± σ): 4.03% ± 5.14%

                         ▂█ ▃ ▄▄▁▄▁
  ▃▁▃▅▆█▃▃▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▃▃▃▃▄▄▆███▇▆▃▄▃▁▃▃▁▄▃▇▅▃▅▄▆▅▆▅▆▆▆▇█▇█████▇▄ ▄
  9.05 ms Histogram: frequency by time 16.9 ms <

 Memory estimate: 8.01 MiB, allocs estimate: 6.

```

Tested on

```julia-auto
julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 1.11.6
Commit 9615af0f269 (2025-07-09 12:58 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org/ release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 192 × AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX 96-Cores
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LLVM: libLLVM-16.0.6 (ORCJIT, znver4)
Threads: 1 default, 0 interactive, 1 GC (on 192 virtual cores)

```

To be clear, sorting algorithms are different, but what do you want to achieve?

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