🚀 go-pugleaf

[response to doubts expressed about posted benchmark]

I've seen compiler differences of 100-fold before, using the same
program on the same hardware.  In this case (a ray-tracing program)
I would guess that the key compiler feature is the trigonometry library,
since the T800 FPU only does +-*/ plus sqrt (sort of).  I have seen
rather naive trig libs using simple algorithms written in C, and, in
contrast, good algorithms hand-optimized in assembler.  The Logical
Systems math library is of the latter sort, and is the fastest there is
on the T800 as far as I know.  So the quoted 25-fold advantage (over a
beta version of an unnamed compiler) seems believable to me.

BTW for graphical rendition purposes single precision is frequently
adequate and a compiler that allows breaking the standard C rule of
doing everything in double wins if it can do single precision faster.
A library that does it even faster in half-precision can also be useful.

- Moshe Braner

"compiled BASIC can be faster than interpreted C"
"Spaghetti code is possible even in Pascal"