I use std::tr1::shared_ptr extensively throughout my application. This includes passing objects in as function arguments. Consider the following:

class Dataset {...}

void f( shared_ptr< Dataset const > pds ) {...}
void g( shared_ptr< Dataset const > pds ) {...}
...

While passing a dataset object around via shared_ptr guarantees its existence inside f and g, the functions may be called millions of times, which causes a lot of shared_ptr objects being created and destroyed. Here's a snippet of the flat gprof profile from a recent run:

Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds.
  %   cumulative   self              self     total
 time   seconds   seconds    calls   s/call   s/call  name
  9.74    295.39    35.12 2451177304     0.00     0.00  std::tr1::__shared_count::__shared_count(std::tr1::__shared_count const&)
  8.03    324.34    28.95 2451252116     0.00     0.00  std::tr1::__shared_count::~__shared_count()

So, ~17% of the runtime was spent on reference counting with shared_ptr objects. Is this normal?

A large portion of my application is single-threaded and I was thinking about re-writing some of the functions as

void f( const Dataset& ds ) {...}

and replacing the calls

shared_ptr< Dataset > pds( new Dataset(...) );
f( pds );

with

f( *pds );

in places where I know for sure the object will not get destroyed while the flow of the program is inside f(). But before I run off to change a bunch of function signatures / calls, I wanted to know what the typical performance hit of passing by shared_ptr was. Seems like shared_ptr should not be used for functions that get called very often.

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

-Artem