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Subject: Re: what is the meaning of RESTRICT in crafty?

Author: Dieter Buerssner

Date: 12:06:14 12/17/03

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On December 17, 2003 at 14:51:38, Anthony Cozzie wrote:


>suppose we make a slight change:
>
>void vectoradd(double *a, double *b, double *c, int len)
>{
>  for(int i = 0; i < len; i++)
>    c[i+1] = b[i] + a[i];
>}
>
>now the compiler cannot unroll the loop unless it knows that there is no
>aliasing.

Hmmm, I think the compiler can still unroll the loop. For example like this
(untested, but you get the idea):

void vectoradd(double *a, double *b, double *c, int len)
{
  int l2 = len/2;
  for (i=0; i<l2; i+=2)
  {
    c[i+1] = b[i] + a[i];
    c[i+2] = b[i+1] + a[i+1];
  }
  /* And now handle odd numbers ... */
}

What the compiler cannot do (in your first and in your second source snippet)
for example: He cannot load a[i] and a[i+1] into two registers, same for b, and
then do two adds with the four registers. It could do this when the pointers
were restrict.

A better example may be,

void copy_pv(pv_t *dest, pv_t *src, size_t n)
{
  int i;
  for (i=0; i<n; i++)
    dest[i] = src[i];
}

Now assume pv_t is unsigned char, and n is long. An obvious optimization would
be to copy the elements word wise (for example 4 chars on typical hardware). The
compiler cannot do this optimization. You might call

  copy_pv(pv_array, pv_array+1, m);

and that would go wrong. So this optimization must not be done. However, when
the pointers are restricted (and then, you never can call copy_pv like above),
the compiler can do this optimization. For example it will be secure, when you
typically only use calls like

  copy_pv(pv1_array, pv2_array, m);

where pv1_array and pv2_array are different objects (no overlap).

Regards,
Dieter



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