• David G. Andersen's avatar
    math/big: slight improvement to algorithm used for internal bitLen function · 1dc37bbf
    David G. Andersen authored
    The bitLen function currently shifts out blocks of 8 bits at a time.
    This change replaces this sorta-linear algorithm with a log(N)
    one (shift out 16 bits, then 8, then 4, then 2, then 1).
    I left the start of it linear at 16 bits at a time so that
    the function continues to work with 32 or 64 bit values
    without any funkiness.
    The algorithm is similar to several of the nlz ("number of
    leading zeros") algorithms from "Hacker's Delight" or the
    "bit twiddling hacks" pages.
    
    Doesn't make a big difference to the existing benchmarks, but
    I'm using the code in a different context that calls bitLen
    much more often, so it seemed worthwhile making the existing
    codebase faster so that it's a better building block.
    
    Microbenchmark results on a 64-bit Macbook Pro using 6g from weekly.2012-01-20:
    
    benchmark                old ns/op    new ns/op    delta
    big.BenchmarkBitLen0             4            6  +50.12%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen1             4            6  +33.91%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen2             6            6   +3.05%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen3             7            6  -19.05%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen4             9            6  -30.19%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen5            11            6  -42.23%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen8            16            6  -61.78%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen9             5            6  +18.29%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen16           18            7  -60.99%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen17            7            6   -4.64%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen31           19            7  -62.49%
    
    On an ARM machine (with the previous weekly):
    
    benchmark                old ns/op    new ns/op    delta
    big.BenchmarkBitLen0            37           50  +36.56%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen1            59           51  -13.69%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen2            74           59  -20.40%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen3            92           60  -34.89%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen4           110           59  -46.09%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen5           127           60  -52.68%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen8           181           59  -67.24%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen9            78           60  -23.05%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen16          199           69  -65.13%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen17           91           70  -23.17%
    big.BenchmarkBitLen31          210           95  -54.43%
    
    R=golang-dev, dave, edsrzf, gri
    CC=golang-dev
    https://golang.org/cl/5570044
    1dc37bbf
arith_test.go 9.42 KB