3 ms·
That was my guess :-) But binary search doesn’t need explicit powers of two. I wonder if maybe the PDP10 is much faster at loops with explicit counters instead
by fanf2 2y ago
That was my guess :-) But binary search doesn’t need explicit powers of two. I wonder if maybe the PDP10 is much faster at loops with explicit counters instead of comparing the search upper and lower bounds.
- FrankWilhoit 2y agoNo, the loop would have been slower. That is why they found the starting point with that bizarre two-instruction sequence. For any table size between (2^^n)+1 and 2^^(n+1), inclusive, it returned 2^^n as the starting point. Then of course it had to loop after that.