Inner Loops: A Sourcebook for Fast 32-Bit Software Design

by Rick Booth

The PC is capable of much faster performance than many people realize, but it is not unusual to find professionally-made software running inefficiently. At the crux of this problem are inner loops of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201479605
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Best book I found on the subject...

The book is starting to be outdated but I did not find a better book on the subject. Teaches a few assembly tricks to help you get a bit of performance. At least it covers Pentium (only Pentium I and Pentium Pro though). When is the second edition coming out? Unless you are already an advanced assembly programmer, you will learn something in this book.

Suberb Book, Second Edition Please!

There are so many computer books that have second editions which add little to the original text. This book deserves a second edition by covering;MMX (when this book was written only the MMX spec from Intel was available, so the author does his best)SSE & 3DNow! & SSE2 Instructions (SIMD FPU rogramming)PII, PIII, & Athlon coverageEncoding / Decoding of Audio and Video Streams

The best book of how to optimize performance of Pentium PCs

This is the best book I know of when it comes to learning how to optimize code for maximum performance on an Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, or Pentium II processor. It is also great for learning about how the processors work. Rick gives a very easy to understand explanation of several advanced concepts such as branch prediction, stalls, address generation interlocks, L1 and L2 caches, and instruction pairing. Every little idiosyncrasy and quirk of the Pentium that may slow down your code is explained so that that you can avoid them all. In many cases, Rick gives you a lot more information than any of official Intel documentation. He also corrects several of Intel's timing charts that do not accurately reflect the real world performance of the Pentium processor. Most of this information is understandable and useful even if you program in C or C++. In other words, you don't have to be writing in assembly language to be concerned about branch prediction, cache lines and the other topics covered in the book. This book is a must have for anyone writing performance code on an Pentium processor and recommended to anyone curious about how the Pentium processor works from a software perspective.

Great reference - lots of interesting information

If you are an experienced C/C++ programmer who thinks that pointer arithmetic is better than array notation for "performance" reasons, then you better get this book cause the world has passed you by. (See page 155 of Rick's excellent book.) If you are at all interested in real performance issues and you find yourself making coding decisions like pointer arithmetic or control flow type (while (i--), or while (--i)), then you need to read this book cause its filled with interesting examples of what different things compile to, how long they *should* take, and how long they *really* take.The only negative I have is that it's a bit old now, and doesn't cover the Pentium II/III. But, much of the Pentium Pro / Pentium information can be extrapolated.

Excellant resource for fine tuning your code

I found this book to be an invaluable aid in fine tuning my code. Not just for the detailed information about the true performance of the various Intel processors, but also the excellant algorithms for some very common problems. This book needs to be owned by anyone doing serious assembly programming