[Numpy-discussion] Numpy and PEP 343

[David M. Cooke]

cookedm at physics.mcmaster.ca (David M. Cooke) writes:

> Tim Hochberg <tim.hochberg at cox.net> writes:
>>>
>> We may want to reconsider this at least partially. I tried
>> implementing a few 1-argument functions two way. First as a table
>> lookup and second using a dedicated opcode. The first gave me a
>> speedup of almost 60%, but the latter gave me a speedup of 100%. The
>> difference suprised me, but I suspect it's do to the fact that the x86
>> supports some functions directly, so the function call gets optimized
>> away for sin and cos just as it does for +-*/. That implies that some
>> functions should get there own opcodes, while others are not worthy.
>
> Yeah, I was going to stare at the assembly output from gcc before
> deciding.
>
> Note that some functions that are supported directly by the CPU may
> still be a function call because they aren't good enough.

... and a quick test shows me that with gcc 4 under linux, only sqrt
is inlined (and it does a test for NaN (I think) and calls the C
library sqrt on that). On PowerPC under OS X, even sqrt is a function
call.

-- 
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|David M. Cooke                      http://arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca/dmc/
|cookedm at physics.mcmaster.ca