CppCon 2017: Chandler Carruth “Going Nowhere Faster”

Chandler Carruth explains how modern CPUs execute loops, focusing on pipelining, branch prediction, and speculative execution to optimize C++ code.

CppCon.org — Presentation Slides, PDFs, Source Code and other presenter materials are available at: github.com/CppCon/CppCon2017 — You care about the performance of your C++ code. You have followed basic patterns to make your C++ code efficient. You profiled your application or server and used the appropriate algorithms to minimize how much work is done and the appropriate data structures to make it fast. You even have reliable benchmarks to cover the most critical and important parts of the system for performance. But you're profiling the benchmark and need to squeeze even more performance out of it... What next? This talk dives into the performance and optimization concerns of the important, performance critical loops in your program. How do modern CPUs execute these loops, and what influences their performance? What can you do to make them faster? How can you leverage the C++ compiler to do this while keeping the code maintainable and clean? What optimization techniques do modern compilers make available to you? We'll cover all of this and more, with piles of code, examples, and even live demo. While the talk will focus somewhat on x86 processors and the LLVM compiler, but everything will be broadly applicable and basic mappings for other processors and toolchains will be discussed throughout. However, be prepared for a lot of C++ code and assembly. — Chandler Carruth: Google, Software Engineer Chandler Carruth leads the Clang team at Google, building better diagnostics, tools, and more. Previously, he worked on several pieces of Google’s distributed build system. He makes guest appearances helping to maintain a few core C++ libraries across Google’s codebase, and is active in the LLVM and Clang open source communities. He received his M.S. and B.S. in Computer Science from Wake Forest University, but disavows all knowledge of the contents of his Master’s thesis. He is regularly found drinking Cherry Coke Zero in the daytime and pontificating over a single malt scotch in the evening. — Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com Work at Hudson River Trading (HRT): tinyurl.com/safxfctf --- Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com