Scan json_view strings with SIMD and index large objects

Speed up json_view's parser with SIMD scanning and a hash table
for large objects.

Long runs of string bytes are scanned 16 bytes at a time with NEON
(AArch64, GCC and Clang) and SSE2 (x86-64), both baseline
instruction sets. Keys keep 16 table checks before the vector
loop, because their lengths repeat from record to record; string
values get 8, because their lengths vary more. Non-ASCII text is
validated 16 bytes at a time with simdjson's "lookup4" check
(Keiser and Lemire, 2021), with NEON on AArch64 and, on x86-64,
with SSSE3. SSSE3 is not part of baseline x86-64, so the check is
compiled for SSSE3 with a function attribute and used only where
CPUID reports it, which all x86-64 CPUs since about 2011 do; the
answer is cached in a statically initialized atomic, so there is
no guard of a local static and no global constructor. The same
input is accepted either way. JSON_VIEW_NO_SIMD selects the
portable code.

On x86-64, string runs are now checked vector-first: one SSE2
compare from the first byte finds the end of most keys and short
values, instead of a branch per byte for the first 8-16 bytes.
AArch64 keeps the byte-wise steps, where a NEON mask costs more and
the branches predict well. Entering an object or array no longer
stalls: open() stores the parent's frame field by field instead of
building it on the stack and reading it back with wider loads,
which waited for the narrower stores to retire.

Objects with 128 members or more get an open-addressing hash table
built when the object closes, so operator[], at(), find(),
contains(), count(), value(), and JSON pointers take constant time
on average in such objects; of duplicate keys, the first is kept,
as for the linear search. The idea comes from Boost.JSON.

simdjson is credited in simd.hpp's SPDX block, the README, and
license.md.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann committed 2026-10-17 08:31:14 +02:00
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@@ -196,7 +196,7 @@ packet-beta
|-------|---------|------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 | `kind` | `uint8_t` | the type, numbered as [`value_t`](../api/basic_json/value_t.md): 0 null, 1 object, 2 array, 3 string, 4 boolean, 5 signed integer, 6 unsigned integer, 7 float |
| 1 | `flags` | `uint8_t` | bits 0-1: where a string's bytes are (0: the source text, 1: the buffer of decoded strings, for strings with escapes); bit 2: the value of a boolean |
| 2-3 | `extra` | `uint16_t` | numbers: the number of integer digits (low byte) and fraction digits (high byte), 255 for more; otherwise 0 |
| 2-3 | `extra` | `uint16_t` | numbers: the number of integer digits (low byte) and fraction digits (high byte), 255 for more; objects: the number of their hash index (1-based), or 0; otherwise 0 |
| 4-7 | `off` | `uint32_t` | where the value starts: the first byte after a string's opening quote (or its position in the buffer of decoded strings), the first byte of a number or literal, the bracket of an array or object |
| 8-11 | `len` | `uint32_t` | strings: the length after decoding; floats and literals: the length of the token; arrays and objects: the number of elements |
| 12-15 | `next` | `uint32_t` | arrays and objects: the number of nodes of the subtree, including the node itself |
@@ -212,6 +212,11 @@ packet-beta
step from element to element this way and skip whole subtrees in constant time.
- **Offsets** are 32 bits wide, so a document is limited to 4294967279 bytes, 4 GiB minus 16 bytes (a margin below
2^32 for positions one scanner step past the end of the text; `out_of_range.416`).
- **Large objects** (128 members or more) get a hash index after parsing
([`detail/view/object_index.hpp`](https://github.com/nlohmann/json/blob/develop/include/nlohmann/detail/view/object_index.hpp)):
an open-addressing table whose slots hold the distance from the object's node to a key's node, so that a lookup does
not compare every key. The object's `extra` holds the number of its table. Only 65,535 tables fit into `extra`;
objects beyond them are searched linearly.
For example, `#!json {"a": [1, 2.5]}` becomes five nodes. Each node's elements follow it, and `next` leads from an
array or object past its subtree: