Your game will actually likely be more efficient if written in C. The gcc compiler has become ridiculously optimized and probably knows more tricks than you do.
Especially these days. Current-gen x86 architecture has all kinds of insane optimizations and special instruction sets that the Pentium I never had (e.g. SSE). You really do need a higher-level compiler at your back to make the most of it these days. And even then, there are cases where you have to resort to inline ASM or processor-specific intrinsics to optimize to the level that Roller Coaster Tycoon is/was. (original system specs)
I might be wrong, but doesn’t SSE require you to explicitly use it in C/C++? Laying out your data as arrays and specifically calling the SIMD operations on them?
I think they meant the other way around, that if you wanted to use it in C/C++, you’d have to either use assembly or some specific SSE construct otherwise the compiler wouldn’t bother.
That probably was the case at one point, but I’d be surprised if it’s still the case. Though maybe that’s part of the reason why the Intel compiler can generate faster code. But I suspect it’s more of a case of better optimization by people who have a better understanding of how it works under the hood, and maybe better utilization of newer instruction set extensions.
SSE has been around for a long time and is present in most (all?) x86 chips these days and I’d be very surprised if gcc and other popular compilers don’t use it effectively today. Some of the other extensions might be different though.
Oh I see your point. Yeah, I think they meant that. And yes, there was a time you’d have to do trickery in C to force the use of SSE or whatever extensions you wanted to use.
Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. I would bet that a modern compiler would just “do the right thing” but I’ve never written code in such a high performance fashion before.
Except everyone writing C is writing sloppy C. It’s like driving a car, there’s always a non-zero chance of an accident.
Even worse, in C the compiler is just waiting for you to trip up so it can do something weird. Think the risk of UB is overblown? I found this article from Raymond Chen enlightening: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140627-00/?p=633
A compiler making assumptions like that about undefined behaviour sounds just like a bug. Maybe the bug is in the spec rather than the compiler, but I can’t think of any time it would be better to optimize that code out entirely because UB is detected rather than just throwing an error or warning and otherwise ignoring the edge cases where the behaviour might break. It sounds like the worst possible option exactly for the reasons listed in that blog.
Your game will actually likely be more efficient if written in C. The gcc compiler has become ridiculously optimized and probably knows more tricks than you do.
Especially these days. Current-gen x86 architecture has all kinds of insane optimizations and special instruction sets that the Pentium I never had (e.g. SSE). You really do need a higher-level compiler at your back to make the most of it these days. And even then, there are cases where you have to resort to inline ASM or processor-specific intrinsics to optimize to the level that Roller Coaster Tycoon is/was. (original system specs)
I might be wrong, but doesn’t SSE require you to explicitly use it in C/C++? Laying out your data as arrays and specifically calling the SIMD operations on them?
There’s absolutely nothing you can do in C that you can’t also do in assembly. Because assembly is just the bunch of bits that the compiler generates.
That said, you’d have to be insane to write a game featuring SIMD instructions these days in assembly.
I think they meant the other way around, that if you wanted to use it in C/C++, you’d have to either use assembly or some specific SSE construct otherwise the compiler wouldn’t bother.
That probably was the case at one point, but I’d be surprised if it’s still the case. Though maybe that’s part of the reason why the Intel compiler can generate faster code. But I suspect it’s more of a case of better optimization by people who have a better understanding of how it works under the hood, and maybe better utilization of newer instruction set extensions.
SSE has been around for a long time and is present in most (all?) x86 chips these days and I’d be very surprised if gcc and other popular compilers don’t use it effectively today. Some of the other extensions might be different though.
Oh I see your point. Yeah, I think they meant that. And yes, there was a time you’d have to do trickery in C to force the use of SSE or whatever extensions you wanted to use.
Honestly, I’m not 100% sure. I would bet that a modern compiler would just “do the right thing” but I’ve never written code in such a high performance fashion before.
Yep but not if you write sloppy C code. Gotta keep those nuts and bolts tight!
If you’re writing sloppy C code your assembly code probably won’t work either
Except everyone writing C is writing sloppy C. It’s like driving a car, there’s always a non-zero chance of an accident.
Even worse, in C the compiler is just waiting for you to trip up so it can do something weird. Think the risk of UB is overblown? I found this article from Raymond Chen enlightening: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140627-00/?p=633
A compiler making assumptions like that about undefined behaviour sounds just like a bug. Maybe the bug is in the spec rather than the compiler, but I can’t think of any time it would be better to optimize that code out entirely because UB is detected rather than just throwing an error or warning and otherwise ignoring the edge cases where the behaviour might break. It sounds like the worst possible option exactly for the reasons listed in that blog.
I hope you are not argueing that using assembly is an improvement over using C in that regard…
Write it in Rust, and it’ll never even leak memory.