Converting an Integer to a Decimal String in Under Two Nanoseconds
Abstract
Converting binary integers to variable-length decimal strings is a fundamental operation in computing. Conventional fast approaches rely on recursive division and small lookup tables. We propose a SIMD-based algorithm that leverages integer multiply-add instructions available on recent AMD and Intel processors. Our method eliminates lookup tables entirely and computes multiple quotients and remainders in parallel. Additionally, we introduce a dual-variant design with dynamic selection that adapts to input characteristics: a branch-heavy variant optimized for homogeneous digit-length distributions and a branch-light variant for heterogeneous datasets. Our single-core algorithm consistently outperforms all competing methods across the full range of integer sizes, running 1.4-2x faster than the closest competitor and 2-4x faster than the C++ standard library function std::to_chars across tested workloads.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.26019,
title = {Converting an Integer to a Decimal String in Under Two Nanoseconds},
author = {Jaël Champagne Gareau and Daniel Lemire},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.26019},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Software at https://github.com/fastfloat/int_serialization_benchmark