Basic Block Layout in the NCG

[Sven Panne]

2018-05-05 21:23 GMT+02:00 Andreas Klebinger <klebinger.andreas at gmx.at>:

> [...] I came across cases where inverting conditions lead to big
> performance losses since suddenly block layout
> got all messed up. (~4% slowdown for the worst offenders). [...]
>

4% is far from being "big", look e.g. at https://dendibakh.github.io/
blog/2018/01/18/Code_alignment_issues where changing just the alignment of
the code lead to a 10% difference. :-/ The code itself or its layout wasn't
changed at all. The "Producing Wrong Data Without Doing Anything Obviously
Wrong!" paper gives more funny examples.

I'm not saying that code layout has no impact, quite the opposite. The main
point is: Do we really have a benchmarking machinery in place which can
tell you if you've improved the real run time or made it worse? I doubt
that, at least at the scale of a few percent. To reach just that simple
yes/no conclusion, you would need quite a heavy machinery involving
randomized linking order, varying environments (in the sense of "number and
contents of environment variables"), various CPU models etc. If you do not
do that, modern HW will leave you with a lot of "WTF?!" moments and wrong
conclusions.
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