[bf1942] Optimized binaries

[Andreas Fredriksson]

I actually benchmarked startup times and frame process times with various
optimizations and what really helps is to reduce the memory footprint of
the server process, i.e. only carefully selected inlining. Modern CPUs
often run heavily inlined code slower because an instruction cache miss
often make them stall on the instruction stream.

I've tried various optimizations during the 1.4 betas and there were no
visible changes in the performance, so currently the server is compiled
with moderate settings. This yields a resonably small executable
footprint and pretty good overall timings on most CPUs.

And as others have pointed out the new optimizing features can easily
cause unexpected results.

// Andreas

> -----Original Message-----
> From: AthlonRob [mailto:AthlonRob at axpr.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 4:53 AM
> To: bf1942 at icculus.org
> Subject: Re: [bf1942] Optimized binaries
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2004-01-20 at 19:50, Andrew A. Chen wrote:
> > Would it be possible to get two sets of binaries in the 
> next release? 
> > Idealy, one set with Athlon optimizations enabled and another with 
> > i686 optimizations?  Or better yet, if you have access to the Intel 
> > compiler, that would be superb.  :)  Thanks.
> 
> ICC only does C++, doesn't it?  Is the server written in C++?
> 
> Some CPU-specific optimizations might be nice... but I'd be 
> willing to wager they're already there... nobody is running 
> the server on <=i586 hardware.  Overly optimizing software 
> tends to introduce bugs, as well. 
> I understand the server, as it stands today, is great among 
> gaming servers as far as stability is concerned, but compared 
> to traditional servers, is still fairly unstable... seg 
> faulting every now and then... optimizations are only going 
> to make that more common.  :-\
> 
> Optimizations are great for increasing speed, just be aware 
> they can also introduce stability issues.
> 
> Rob
>