{"slug": "yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from", "title": "yolow64: a Base64 codec for Rust that outruns the incumbents — extracted from PageSift", "summary": "A developer has released yolow64, an MIT-licensed Base64 codec for Rust extracted from the PageSift web-content engine, featuring runtime-dispatched SIMD (AVX2 with an assembly bulk decode loop on Linux x86-64, NEON on AArch64, and a scalar fallback) with zero runtime dependencies. Benchmarked on an i7-10700, the library reports roughly 6.5–9× faster strict-mode encode and decode than the base64 crate and 1.7–2.5× faster than base64-simd at 4 KiB–4 MiB, with CRLF-tolerant decode about 4× faster than base64-simd's forgiving_decode. The author notes that at inputs of 128 bytes or less the libraries trade wins within noise.", "body_md": "While building PageSift (a Rust web-content engine for LLM pipelines), I kept hitting Base64 in places where throughput and allocation control actually matter: browser screenshots, MCP resources, proxy authentication. The codec that grew inside PageSift is now its own MIT-licensed library: **yolow64**.\n\n- Runtime-dispatched SIMD: AVX2 (with an assembly bulk decode loop on Linux x86-64), NEON on AArch64, scalar fallback; runtime detection is cached.\n- Zero runtime dependencies, std only, Rust 1.89+.\n- Slice / append / owned-output APIs, validation without decoding, streaming decode, and a one-shot data-URL builder.\n- Whitespace-tolerant mode ignores exactly space/tab/CR/LF in a single pass — built for MIME-style input.\n\nMeasured on an i7-10700 (same process, three full runs, medians of seven-round medians; full method, charts and raw CSVs in the repo):\n\n- Strict mode at 4 KiB–4 MiB: ~6.5–9× faster than the `base64` crate, ~1.7–2.5× faster than`base64-simd` , encode and decode.\n- CRLF-tolerant decode: ~4× faster than base64-simd's `forgiving_decode` at the same sizes.\n- On the same machine it runs level with moego, the fastest Go implementation I measured.\n- Honest footnote: at ≤128 B inputs the three libraries trade wins — those differences are nanoseconds and noise-sensitive, and the repo's tables print them as-is. The whitespace modes also don't accept exactly the same inputs across libraries; the comparison covers valid padded CRLF inputs.\n\nRepo: [https://github.com/YOLOW92/yolow64](https://github.com/YOLOW92/yolow64) — benchmarks are reproducible from the included harness; corrections welcome.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/yolow92/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from-pagesift-1210", "published_at": "2026-11-09 04:48:37+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-09 04:52:15.156528+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["yolow64", "PageSift", "Rust", "base64", "base64-simd", "moego", "Go"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/yolow64-a-base64-codec-for-rust-that-outruns-the-incumbents-extracted-from.jsonld"}}