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I've been wondering about this recently. Modern branch predictors are really good at predicting correlated conditional branches. That is, if you have two if sta
by atq2119 4y ago
I've been wondering about this recently. Modern branch predictors are really good at predicting correlated conditional branches. That is, if you have two if statements near each other that use the same condition, modern branch predictors have a very good chance of learning to predict the second one perfectly based on what the first one did.
Is the same true for indirect calls, i.e. virtual function calls? That could be quite the powerful optimization, but it's probably really hard to do.
- taeric 4y agoMy understanding is that this is, essentially, the optimization that you get with many common "entity component system" frameworks. That is, you typically try to keep homogeneous collections of entities so that when you are processing them, you are doing a similar processing in a loop. Amusingly, as I try to google to make sure I am using the right terms, I find https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28200030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28200030 as a good result. Seems to cover the general idea and hints at other terms to look into. In particular, have fun with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AoS_and_SoA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AoS_and_SoA. :D Edit: I should add that I'm pretty sure my memory conjuring up ECS stuff was just mistaken, btw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design is probably what I actually had in mind.