[flac-dev] Git branch with compiling fixes for win32

[Brian Willoughby]

On May 7, 2012, at 06:11, Miroslav Lichvar wrote:
> On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 11:22:00AM -0400, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
>> El 03/05/12 12:19, Miroslav Lichvar escribió:
>>> It makes the C function faster than the corresponding asm  
>>> routine, so
>>> if it's included I'd suggest to just drop the asm function to not  
>>> keep
>>> around more asm code than is necessary.
>>
>> With current compilers it is very likely that those routines are  
>> already
>> superflous.
>
> It seems the current compilers are not that good yet :).
>
> In a test on a Core 2 machine with gcc-4.6.3, i686 flac build with
> nasm enabled is about 7% faster in decoding than without nasm. x86_64
> build is about 2% faster than the i686 build with nasm enabled.


Thank you for running these benchmarks and reporting on the results,  
Miroslav.

As a sometimes assembly coder, I believe that compilers will never be  
able to beat a human mind in all situations, even if they can in  
most.  I can't speak for the FLAC assembly developers, but when I  
write assembly, I always check the compiler's output at all  
optimization settings just to be sure I'm not wasting my time.  That  
certainly doesn't guarantee that the compiler will never improve its  
results, but keep in mind that changes to compilers sometimes produce  
less optimal results for particular cases, even if they involve  
improvements in most general cases.

But it's certainly good to double-check periodically as compilers  
"improve."

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting