Improving Elixir Performance for Processing Large Data Files

Michael Neumann discusses a performance optimization technique for Elixir when tasked with processing a one-billion-line text file. The challenge involves calculating min, max, and mean temperatures for repeated city entries in a semicolon-separated format. Neumann's pure Elixir solution with no external dependencies improved parsing by avoiding naive string split methods, utilizing fixed-point arithmetic over floating-point parsing, and optimizing memory allocation through processes. The methodology focused on constant factors, divide and conquer principles, and efficient memory allocations. His approach processed the data in 40 seconds using 16 virtual CPUs, which demonstrates a significant performance gain compared to other methods. The code, which is readable to those with an Elixir background, is shared on GitHub, illustrating the entire optimization process.