CppCon 2024

Learn what Return Value Optimization (RVO) is, and what you can do to ensure the compiler applies it on your C++ code! This talk is open to beginner, intermediate, and advanced C++ audiences, and will be especially valuable for engineers who work on large-scale and/or high performance codebases.

While this compiler optimization technique was first added into the C++ Standard way back in 1997, many of today’s engineers have forgotten to utilize it in their production-deployed code.

This talk will dive into different perspectives as to what RVO is, including how copy elision is defined in the C++ Standard, as well as an analysis of Assembly when RVO is enabled. We will cover the different types of RVO, compiler support for it, and guidelines to help programmers ensure that the compiler uses RVO on their code. These guidelines will tie into examples from real-world scenarios where engineers could have optimized their code to gain the time and space benefits that come with RVO. We will also showcase the performance improvements that come from employing this compiler optimization technique.