[Pandas-dev] Setuptools detection of host cpuinfo and/or header file availablity

[yoval p.]

Conventional wisdom says that these days trying to outdo
optimizing compilers is a fool's errand.
Do you have numbers showing that manually coding at the instruction
level can do significantly better then the compiler?

If so, you're probably a modern day
[John_Henry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)), In
which case try not to drop dead at the end of a long and agonizing
python packaging nightmare, as we'd like to see more of your tricks in
pandas in the future.

Yoval

On 04/27/2013 02:14 AM, Stephen Lin wrote:
>> icc can automatically bloat the binary with parallel paths and choose at
>> runtime like you describe IIRC.
> 
> Also, yeah, I've heard that it does that, but I don't trust a compiler
> to do this optimally :D how could it know where to place the check
> optimally? You don't want to do redundant checks within tight loops
> but you also don't want to create too many parallel code paths;
> there's also ABI/linking issues if it duplicates entire functions...
> 
> Stephen
>