On 2/10/2012 1:39 AM, Miles Bader wrote:
xunxun<xunxun1982@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
If you switch to using SSE floating-point, e.g. using "-mfpmath=sse",
it will still call the library functions even when using -ffast-math
(because the SSE unit doesn't have special instructions like "fsin" or
"f2xm1"). I think SSE FP is typically faster than the 387 for many
CPUs anyway.
Well, that's right.
But in my experience, -mfpmath=sse will slow my code very much.
Hmm, I've always found SSE FP to be a speedup -- sometimes a _big_
speedup -- over 387 FP, at least when one is using mostly primitive FP
operations (mul, divide, sqrt, etc) ... I think it's worth testing, at
least.
387 code may be faster when you mix float and double, e.g. by forcing
double evaluation of float expressions by removing the f suffix from
constants.
It has been a long time since I had 32-bit OS installed and could
examine the broken mathinline.h headers which typically came with them.
You would need to fix those before trying -ffast-math.
--
Tim Prince
