On Modern Hardware the Min-Max Heap beats a Binary Heap
The heap is a data structure that I use all the time and that others somehow use rarely. (I once had a coworker tell me that he knew some code was mine because it used a heap) Recently I was writing code that could really benefit from using a heap (as most code can) but I needed to be able to pop items from both ends. So I read up on double-ended priority queues and how to implement them. These are rare, but the most common implementation is the “Interval Heap” that can be explained quickly, has clean code and is only slightly slower than a binary heap. But there is an alternative called the “Min-Max Heap” that doesn’t have pretty code, but it has shorter dependency chains, which is important on modern hardware. As a result it often ends up faster than a binary heap, even though it allows you to pop from both ends. Which means there might be no reason to ever use a binary heap again.
Source: On Modern Hardware the Min-Max Heap beats a Binary Heap, an article by Malte Skarupke.