AMD CodeAnalyst is free and pretty good if you have an AMD CPU. If you have an Intel processor it still works it just does less. The two main data access perf

AMD CodeAnalyst is free and pretty good if you have an AMD CPU. If you have an Intel processor it still works it just does less. The two main data access performance tips are: 1) make sure your loops work right to left if you have [10][9][8] iterate over the 8 array first, the 9 array second, the 10 array third(that is the cache optimal ordering). 2) Prefer SoA(structure of Arrays) to AoS(array of structures) Say you have an array of a structure and you need to loop over the array to update one field in the structure you increase cache hits if you make the structure hold arrays of elements instead of an array of structures.