std::deque will never beat your hand-rolled ring buffer. It's a container, it will spend time managing memory every time you walk off the end of a chunk. If it's implemented right*, it will hold onto a chunk which fell off, and will only allocate twice. If it's implemented wrong*, it will allocate after `chunksize` pushes, and free every `chunksize` pops (which might be handled properly by your allocator). But it's still going to need to shuffle those chunks around, adding unnecessary overhead because you're using a ring in a way that is a perfect fit for your application: you use the value you're popping every time you push.
* for your purpose! Therein lies the challenge of writing standard libraries... choices must be made.
* for your purpose! Therein lies the challenge of writing standard libraries... choices must be made.