Does 'if' have performance overhead

[lali.b97]

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.
I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when
it comes to writing programs.

Please guide.

[Kai-Uwe Bux]

la******@gmail. com wrote:

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

Somewhat true, I hear.

It's not the if-statement per se. It's the fact that control flow of the
program branches.

From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing
my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

That is a Bad Idea(tm).

Optimizations avoiding if-statements are usually non-obvious and change the
nature of your code fundamentally. To see that, just try to rewrite

unsigned int max ( unsigned int lhs, unsigned int rhs );

without branch statements. Generally, avoiding branch statements can be
considered code obfuscation. Code obfuscation for the sake of performance
gains that have not proven necessary by profiling is a form of premature
optimization.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.

What do your measurements tell you?

I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when
it comes to writing programs.

It should not be. Programmer time is much more expensive than CPU time. The
rational choice is to optimize for code beauty, extendability, ease of use,
and maintenability.
Best

Kai-Uwe Bux

[Jim Langston]

<la******@gmail .comwrote in message
news:11******** **************@ q3g2000prf.goog legroups.com...

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

>>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.

I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when
it comes to writing programs.

Please guide.

You should not prematurely optimize. That is, don't attempt to optimize
code until you find what is actually taking the time.

if statements are extremly common in code in all languages They essentially
come down to a jump in the CPU based on some condition (jump if not zero,
jump if greater than zero, etc...). Now, I believe you are talking about
prefetching instructions and that he CPU won't know what set of instructions
to prefetch if there is a jump, set A or set B.

A lot of times the compiler itself may optimize the code, and a lot of times
the CPUs are smart enough to either figure it out or prefetch both branches.
In other words, I would not worry about if statments taking up too much
time. Although I wouldn't throw in if statments for no reason either.

[=?UTF-8?B?RXJpayBXaWtzdHLDtm0=?=]

On 2007-10-16 07:25, la******@gmail. com wrote:

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

This is totally off topic:

That is only partially true one a modern PC processor (as opposed to
embedded processors which I have little knowledge about) since they all
have pretty good branch prediction these days. This is best demonstrated
by a simple loop:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i)
{
// do stuff
}
// do other stuff

The processor recognises a loop when it sees one, and it will assume
that you will perform the iterations, so the loop can be optimised very
well. The problem comes when the last iteration is done, since the
processor wrongly assumes that you will iterate you get a small
performance hit when it discovers that you do not.

Similarly the processor can optimise if statements and other control
statements. Even better, they can learn, so if you have an if statement
and you time after time go to the else clause the processor will
remember this and will start executing the else clause when reaching the
if statement before the comparison is complete. Again, should it happen
that the assumption is wrong you get a performance hit.

Notice though that this performance hit is less noticeable on modern
hardware than is was on a P4, since the processors of today are not as
deeply pipelined.

>>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

The best way to optimise an if statement is to write the code that is
most likely to be executed in the if clause and the least likely in the
else clause, since that will save the processor a jump in most cases.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.

Rightly you should be, you should be sceptic about any optimisation that
is not at the algorithmic level.

I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when
it comes to writing programs.

Select the best algorithms and data structures for the task and then use
a good profiler.

--
Erik Wikström

[lali.b97]

On Oct 16, 2:04 pm, Erik Wikström <Erik-wikst...@telia. comwrote:

On 2007-10-16 07:25, lali....@gmail. com wrote:

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

This is totally off topic:

That is only partially true one a modern PC processor (as opposed to
embedded processors which I have little knowledge about) since they all
have pretty good branch prediction these days. This is best demonstrated
by a simple loop:

for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i)
{
// do stuff
}
// do other stuff

The processor recognises a loop when it sees one, and it will assume
that you will perform the iterations, so the loop can be optimised very
well. The problem comes when the last iteration is done, since the
processor wrongly assumes that you will iterate you get a small
performance hit when it discovers that you do not.

Similarly the processor can optimise if statements and other control
statements. Even better, they can learn, so if you have an if statement
and you time after time go to the else clause the processor will
remember this and will start executing the else clause when reaching the
if statement before the comparison is complete. Again, should it happen
that the assumption is wrong you get a performance hit.

Notice though that this performance hit is less noticeable on modern
hardware than is was on a P4, since the processors of today are not as
deeply pipelined.

>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

The best way to optimise an if statement is to write the code that is
most likely to be executed in the if clause and the least likely in the
else clause, since that will save the processor a jump in most cases.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.

Rightly you should be, you should be sceptic about any optimisation that
is not at the algorithmic level.

I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when
it comes to writing programs.

Select the best algorithms and data structures for the task and then use
a good profiler.

--
Erik Wikström

Thank you very much for your response.

lali

[Stephan Rose]

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:25:22 -0700, lali.b97 wrote:

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot agressively
optimize that code.

>>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

However, i am bit skeptic about this.
I need some guidance. Performance is always the key issue for me when it
comes to writing programs.

Please guide.

I wouldn't worry about it. If I wanted to avoid if statements in my code
I'd be in serious trouble. Only worry about optimizing what actually
needs optimizing.

To give you an example, I am working on a 2D CAD application for
electronics design. At the lowest level, I have a class called Scalar
that allows me to perform arithmetic with any 2 values, regardless of
unit type (inch, millimeter, etc.) with one another.

This being among the most essential and lowest-level class of them all,
it has every bit imaginable optimized out of it that I can think of.
Because even a single instruction saved in this class can translate into
hundred thousands or more instructions during a complex operation later
on. Here, speed matters more to me than code clarity.

Maybe I should sell it to NASA so that they can stop crashing things into
planets because they can't get their units straight. =)

Now, my higher level functions though, such as the code that can take 2
object outlines composed of line and curve segments and calculate the
distance or intersection between the two outlines, is somewhat optimized
but I don't overly worry about squeezing every last bit out of it. In a
worst case scenario this code might maybe be called a hundred or so times
in one shot. Clearly written code at the expense of speed is more
important here as it involves some complex operating.

So what I'm trying to get at is, unless the code is really speed critical
and you absolutely will benefit from every tiniest bit of optimization,
don't worry about it. Rather worry that your code is clearly written in a
way that you can still understand it when you come back to it 6 months
later. That'll benefit you far more. =)

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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[Juha Nieminen]

la******@gmail. com wrote:

Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

>>From that day onwards i have been trying to avoid if statement withing

my functions as much as possible and also try to have minimum code
withing if block.

You are making the classic mistake: Believing something you read and
starting blindly doing it that way without actually *testing* it in
practice.

I may well be that your avoidance of the if clause may in fact be
producing slower code. However, since you haven't tested both
possibilities in your programs, you can't know.

Anyways, in the vast majority of cases such a small potential
optimization doesn't matter at all. Usually less than 1% of a program
which performs heavy calculations would require such low-level
optimization (if even that much).

[Michael Bell]

In message <ff**********@m urdoch.acc.Virg inia.EDU>
Kai-Uwe Bux <jk********@gmx .netwrote:

la******@gmail. com wrote:

>Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

It takes more time? I'm not sure how you would measure that! Surely
not by sitting in front of the screen with a stop-watch?

The only workable thing I can think of is to put a line before the
block under test to read the internal clock, a second line at the end
of the block, and the difference is the time taken. How exactly would
you do such a thing?

Michael Bell

--

[Michael Bell]

In message <ff**********@m urdoch.acc.Virg inia.EDU>
Kai-Uwe Bux <jk********@gmx .netwrote:

la******@gmail. com wrote:

>Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

It takes more time? I'm not sure how you would measure that! Surely
not by sitting in front of the screen with a stop-watch?

The only workable thing I can think of is to put a line before the
block under test to read the internal clock, a second line at the end
of the block, and the difference is the time taken. How exactly would
you do such a thing?

Michael Bell

--

[Stephan Rose]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:33:09 +0100, Michael Bell wrote:

In message <ff**********@m urdoch.acc.Virg inia.EDU>
Kai-Uwe Bux <jk********@gmx .netwrote:

> la******@gmail. com wrote:

>>Somewhere in a tutorial i read that if statement has performance
overheads as code within the if statement cannot take benefit of
pipeling of microprocessor and also that the compiler cannot
agressively optimize that code.

It takes more time? I'm not sure how you would measure that! Surely not
by sitting in front of the screen with a stop-watch?

The only workable thing I can think of is to put a line before the block
under test to read the internal clock, a second line at the end of the
block, and the difference is the time taken. How exactly would you do
such a thing?

That is a little platform dependent really.

In my case, I have a class called CpuTimer that works both under Windows
and Linux that can do high precision timing.

Then when I want to profile something, I will usually isolate the one
single function I want to profile, write a small test case along with
test data. The amount of data I generate depends on the complexity of the
function, that can range anywhere from a few hundred data items to a few
million.

Then I measure the time it took to process the complete data set, which
then divided by the number of data items in the set gives me the average
execution time per function call.

It's not 100% precise of course as too many uncontrollable factors can
affect execution speed, such as OS background tasks and such. However, it
is good enough to tell if a change I have made has made things better or
worse which is ultimately the only thing I am really concerned about.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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