Re: Optimising Elisp code [again]

[Garreau, Alexandre]

On 2018-10-07 at 17:59, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Stefan Monnier wrote:
> So there is no gain as to the number of machine instructions. So where
> is the gain? The `call' instruction specifically, or the implied
> funcall overhead not visible in the disassembly?

A smarter compiler could have optimized the discarded value (since we
don’t use its return value, and the inlined function don’t have any
side-effects (which otherwise would have been preserved)), or could have
simplified the result (I checked and with + 2 then - 2 it seems elisp
compiler don’t do this, while I’m sure gcc can) if something was going
to be done with it.

However, inlining is not an optimization made to gain space or reduce
the number of instruction (even worse: normally it could *increase* the
total amount of instruction and therefore use more memory), it’s here to
gain *speed*.  Not by executing less instructions, but by removing a
jump (the funcall), as in today’s computers, jumps (like function calls,
or conditionals) can increase execution time.  So at the end,
duplicating instructions can lead to faster execution, albeit increased
memory usage.

I kind of forgot why jumps are slow, but afair, either because the cache
being little it’s faster to execute nearby code, either because as
modern cpus try to do as much as possible in the same time (pipeline
instructions optimization, found in today’s superscalar cpu, iirc), they
need to know what will be executed next, and they stop searching what’s
next after a jump…  but that (+ loop unrolling) might be mitigated by
the fact that if you use too much memory at same time, it might not fit
in the smaller and faster cache, and then get slower…  so I guess here
it gets complex and architecture dependant, and becomes the job of
complex and native compilers to guess what is best to do.