Ron Parker <par### [at] fwicom> wrote:
:>  You can always make the same and often better code than a program can.
:>It requires LOTS of knowledge about the cpu, though.

: That's knowledge most mere mortals don't have when it comes to P5/P6
: optimization.

  You are terribly right.
  A long time ago, in the age of 286's and even 386's the architecture of
the CPU was so simple that making a superduper-optimized asm code which
was at least twice as fast as any C code, was quite easy.
  Nowadays, however, the CPU's have evolved to such an extent and they are
so extremely complicated, that the same tricks of the old asm coding do not
hold anymore. To beat a good C-compiler it would require so much knowledge
about the CPU (and often other hardware) that it's almost impossible for
the average asm-coder.
  The compiler has two main advantages over a human coder: It will remember
everything taught to it and it will compile extremely fast.

  Nowadays it doesn't make much sense to code in assembler for the big
computers. I have not written a line of asm in many years. A pitty, really.
  Fortunately we still have the embedded systems...

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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