Re: Which is a better way to implement this algorithm?

From:
mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++,comp.programming
Date:
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:18:44 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<9cbb8777-2dbd-4a3b-8337-a08ba08cbde8@b5g2000pri.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 20, 1:43 am, "Ivan Vecerina"
<_INVALID_use_webfo...@ivan.vecerina.com> wrote:

"mike3" <mike4...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

<snip>

Assuming no truncation (because of adequate pre-allocation
of result digits), the same algorithm can be written as:

 for( unsigned aPos = 0 ; aPos<aLength ; ++aPos )
 {
    Digit carry = 0;
    TwoDigit const aDig = a.digits[aPos]; //NB: cast "hidden" here
    for( unsigned bPos = 0 ; bPos<bLength ; ++bPos )
    {
        TwoDigit mul = aDig * b.digits[bPos]
                     + this->digits[aPos+bPos]
                     + carry;

        this->digits[aPos+bPos] = mul & digitBitMask;
        carry = ( mul >> dig=

itBitCount );

    }
    this->digits[aPos+bPos] = carry;
 }

There are many correct ways to write this, and some are
probably better is some ways than this example. But I
hope that you will find it useful.
In any case, given the very acceptable complexity of this loop,
I would not bother breaking it up or adding layers of
encapsulation.


Unfortunately, I noticed this last implementation where the
cast is "hidden" seems to lose performance. My benchmark
returned 17 seconds for this vs 12 for a similar routine where the
only difference is the cast is not "hidden" by assigning the digit
to a TwoDigit64.

I'm wondering if maybe this is because the compiler has done
a 32x32 multiply when using the one-liner with internal cast, and
returns 64-bit result, but when you try to "hide" the cast it tries
to do a 64x32 or even 64x64 multiply since it sees one 64-bit
operand coming in, which wastes time. I guess it depends on the
optimizer. In the one with the cast the optimizer can "see" that
both operands are 32-bit, so it could "know" to only do 32x32->64
instead of 64x32->64 or 64x64->64 (mod mul by 2^64).

Is this a good theory? Should I go with the casts?

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