On Nov 21, 2007 6:12 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What's to say that a computer program can't code assembly better than > > any human possibly could? There are a ton of tasks that computers do > > thousands of times better than humans. I think it makes perfect sense > > that code written in C can execute faster than human-written assembly > > code. > > No compiler will ever do *all* of the optimizations > that are possible, because most optimizations are > NP-complete or even much worse. For example the > equivalance of boolean expressions is NP-complete. > Some potential optimizations (such as replacement > of data structures) may not even computable. > This is why humans must choose the algorithms and > data strucures. > > Compilers are very good at *small, local optimizations*, > such as putting variables in registers, common > sub-expression elimination, and choosing the fastest > instructions. Compilers almost always > outperform humans on these tasks because compilers > consistently try every trick they know, and they > don't get tired. > > Even way back in the 1970s, studies showed that > optimizers consistently outperformed humans on > these tasks, and back then, many people > still practiced doing assembler regularly. > > Today, performance combines programmer and compiler > intelligence. Neither can replace the other. > Please use both. > > Michael Wing >
So this seems to support the idea that C code is potentially faster than hand-coded assembly, because the more complicated optimizations can be done by the programmer in C while the optimizations better suited to a computer are done by the compiler. Although it would also be possible to hand-code in assembly and then run a program to optimize it, but then it seems like there is no advantage over C. As far as I can tell, the optimizations that a compiler can't do are higher-level optimizations that can be done in C and wouldn't require the programmer to write assembly, or am I wrong about this? Colin _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
