[fpc-devel] inline... and philosophy

[Florian Klämpfl]

Am 10.11.19 um 16:02 schrieb J. Gareth Moreton:
> This message chain has proven to be a lot more educational and 
> insightful than I would have given it credit for.  Thanks everybody!
> 
> I know a lot of the time, the size of binaries is just an illusion, 
> along with unfair comparisons with GCC (a behemoth with corporate 
> support) and Microsoft Visual C++ that often hides the size of binaries 
> behind a redistributable library.  I don't ever seek to make binaries 
> smaller at the expense of speed, but if I see a potential saving that 
> could be done automatically, I dive for it!
> 
> On 10/11/2019 14:47, Marco van de Voort wrote:
>> (and btw, if you are serious about these scenarios, drop all 
>> optimization work immediately, and start working on packages :-)
> 
> I did try to start simple with the 'uComplex' unit, but concerns were 
> raised because I changed the formal parameters to 'const' and aligned 
> the complex type on x86-64 platforms so it can take advantage of XMM 
> registers better (which, given proper optimisation, would result in both 
> smaller code size and higher speed).  While I made sure that the 
> interfaces would not change for Pascal code, assembler code that calls 
> the functions (if it exists) might need to be changed slightly 
> (something Florian raised).  I'm not quite sure what the rules are when 
> it comes fo updating packages, other than the obvious one of not 
> breaking old code.

Currently, there is no real gain by changing the calling conventions. 
When we have a vectorizer, we can talk about it.

> 
> I like working on optimisation because I have a morbid fascination with 
> the lowest level of the CPU and I feel well-suited for it, although 
> there are still some things I'm learning about it.
> 
> Gareth aka. Kit
> 
> 
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