this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Programming

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How often does branchless programming actually matter? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago by firelizzard@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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I've started noticing articles and YouTube videos touting the benefits of branchless programming, making it sound like this is a hot new technique (or maybe a hot old technique) that everyone should be using. But it seems like it's only really applicable to data processing applications (as opposed to general programming) and there are very few times in my career where I've needed to use, much less optimize, data processing code. And when I do, I use someone else's library.

How often does branchless programming actually matter in the day to day life of an average developer?

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[โ€“] marcos@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want your code to run on the GPU, the complete viability of your code depend on it. But if you just want to run it on the CPU, it is only one of the many micro-optimization techniques you can do to take a few nanoseconds from an inner loop.

The thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as "average developer". Computing is way too diverse for it.

[โ€“] LaggyKar@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

And the branchless version may end up being slower on the CPU, because the compiler does a better job optimizing the branching version.