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Subject: Assembler handtuning benefit

Author: Bas Hamstra

Date: 05:25:18 11/14/97

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On November 11, 1997 at 09:42:55, Robert Hyatt wrote:

[asm faster than C]

>However, there is *much* more to the topic.  *if* you are willing to
>"write"
>assembly language code, rather than just re-writing C code into assembly
>code, the gains can be much bigger.  One example:  Cray Research has
>what is
>considered to be the best FORTRAN compiler on the market, for obvious
>reasons.
>In Cray Blitz, we spent a couple of years writing assembly code and
>rather
>than a paltry 20-40%, we got 500% faster.  Why?  Because we didn't
>"convert"
>FORTRAN to assembly, we completely re-designed the program with the
>underlying
>architecture firmly in mind.

Five years ago you could gain 300% or 400% on X86 C compilers too, by
doing
it in assembler. But compilers have improved significantly since then.
Based on my own (limited asm) experiences I find it hard to believe that
400% would be possible with todays compilers (Visual C/Watcom even GNU).

Maybe it would be fun if you published the specs a for a very simple
and very short benchmark test here (I hope you can find the time).
Then we could all do our best jobs in asm and C and see how they
compare.

And that test, not only simple to you but to anyone, please :)



Best regards,
Bas Hamstra.




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