[nzlug] Threading / Parallel Programming Languages

[Nic Bellamy]

Daniel Pittman wrote:
> If you are serious about understanding the performance it is also well
> worth your time digging out a low level inspection tool like oprofile or
> cachegrind at some point and doing analysis on a threaded process like
> that.
> 
> Being able to see the effects of cache costs on the running code can be
> extremely instructive.

I'd just like to second this.

Cachegrind in particular has been particularly useful to me - I managed 
to reduce the runtime of some digital signal processing code (on an x86 
CPU) by approximately 60% by using cachegrind to find the hotspots, and 
reworking the code to be kinder to the cache.

Attempting the same without it would have taken a heck of a lot longer, 
and have been far more of a hit or miss process.

Cheers,
	Nic.

-- 
Nic Bellamy <nic at bellamy.co.nz>