The Magic Ring Buffer: A Beautiful Trick That's Mostly Not Worth It

Map the same block of memory twice, right next to itself, and a ring buffer’s wrap-around just… vanishes. Every read and write becomes one clean, contiguous span — no branch, no split, no copy. It’s the most seductive trick in low-latency systems, so I set out to prove it earns its keep.

It mostly doesn’t — and the naive benchmark I started with told me five confident things that were all dead wrong before I caught it. But strip away the hype and there’s exactly one thing a double-mapped buffer does that nothing else can, and if your hot path needs it, the magic is real. Here’s when it’s a party trick — and when it’s the only tool for the job.

https://hftuniversity.com/post/the-magic-ring-buffer-a-beautiful-trick-that-s-mostly-not-worth-it

Remember, Substack paid subscribers have full access to posts on hftuniversity.com - just create an account with the same email as your substack.

#cpp #cplusplus #hft #trading