On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Jamie Bullock wrote:
I just wonder about the extra overhead involved in dealing with tagged lists of data.
I just did a benchmark, and for a billion iterations, with a compiler optimisation level of O2, both a loop with the SETFLOAT statement, and an empty loop completed in the order of 1-2 microseconds!
a really good optimiser can make an *infinite* loop run in that long! ;)
seriously, with optimisers it's becoming harder to make some measurements. C has a type modifier called "volatile" while forces true read/write on a variable, which can be useful when handling signals, threads, mmaped hardware, and... benchmarks.
Using that keyword, you can pretend that the compiler doesn't already know that it doesn't need to change the contents of the atom because you always write the same thing over and over and never use those values. Thus you can simulate a real situation but still isolate several components when you measure them.
Anyway... in the context of remote procedure calls and massive disk accesses, SETFLOAT should be the least of your concerns.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal QC Canada