A course in high performance computing should include some material on computer architecture and SIMD, though the focus is more on parallel programming and GPU.

A course in high performance computing should include some material on computer architecture and SIMD, though the focus is more on parallel programming and GPU. To get into the right mindset for SIMD optimization, play Zachtronic games. You have a big pile of odd-shaped tools that take some input and output a result a few cycles later, you have limits on how many instructions can run at once, but maybe you can do something like a load each cycle for free. Run your benchmark, count the cycles, make a small tweak and test again.