ack_complete

8 ms·

1.
by ack_complete 3d ago
> though it seems to be off by default since MSVC2022 This seems to be a typo in the docs, VS2022 is 17.x and still generates volatile metadata. VS2026 is 18.x. Last time I tested it, the penalty in Prism for running x64 code without vo
2.
by ack_complete 4d ago
Strange, because .NET was specifically designed to be a JITted environment and taking advantage of SSE2 when available would ordinarily be an advantage of a JIT. But sure enough, .NET 4.0 x86 still uses x87 instructions for math. It's
3.
by ack_complete 4d ago
There is a significant difference between a stack-based ISA and a stack-based bytecode. In bytecode, it's fine or even a requirement to empty the stack between loop iterations. The JIT will then enregister variables across the loop as
4.
by ack_complete 7d ago
The answer's all over the place with each successive CPU generation. Originally Intel CPUs had adds faster than multiplies, then both went through the FMA unit so they were the same, then they added a fast FP adder, etc. And current ti
5.
by ack_complete 8d ago
Sadly, I've never seen a C++ compiler use this (old) technique for lambda reference captures. The main compilers all seem to just use individual references for each capture instead of a single reference to the stack frame, which makes
6.
by ack_complete 14d ago
Direct2D has some complex algorithms because it was designed for high-quality antialiased rasterization on DX9-class hardware, particularly tesselation, and suitable not only for vector graphics but also text glyphs. This bleeds over into t
7.
by ack_complete 19d ago
The keyboard support in "Modern" Windows apps is so random. In the new Notepad, the dialog that appears asking if you want to create a new files shows Yes and No buttons, but it doesn't accept Y and N keys, only Esc and Enter
8.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
MMX did help significantly with software 3D rendering. I worked on a software rasterizer that benefited significantly from it. But it didn't take long before even a well-optimized software renderer on a high end CPU couldn't kee
9.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
MMX in did not become irrelevant with the GeForce 256. Hardware video decoding was only in its infancy at the time and even the highest end GPUs only supported motion compensation acceleration for decoding only at best. Non-display image pr
10.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
> I believe that only the first Pentium 3 core, Katmai, did this. No, all Pentium 3s as well as the Pentium M. Pentium 4 notably didn't suffer from it, but it of course had many, many, MANY other performance issues. > I have some
11.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
MMX had heavy adoption in image and video processing. IDCT, motion prediction/compensation, YUV/RGB conversion, and alpha blending all benefited from it.
12.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
I did extensive MMX and SSE2 optimization of audio and video codecs in the 2000s. MMX made a large difference, but it was a pain. MMX optimization practically required assembly language. The Pentium MMX was an in-order dual pipe CPU, and wh
13.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
I wonder if this is a gamma correction related. JPEG encodes directly in a non linear color encoding (full-range YCbCr), so the partial decoding may be effectively scaling without gamma correction.
14.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
Moreover, what if you quote text that happens to have been generated by Claude, does that bump up the AI-ness score of your source file or document?
15.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
We already have one, our Claude setup already requires output to be 7-bit ASCII clean and scans it for such.
16.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
The stacks are allocated gradually, but there's a minimum few committed pages for each thread and there can be a lot of threads. The graphics driver alone will typically spawn a thread per CPU core unless you specifically disable threa
17.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
Hardware texture compression formats aren't really great for UI and result in visible artifacts, even with a good compressor -- mostly flat areas or gradients divided by sharp edges makes the compression loss more visible. BC3/DXT
18.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
No interior pointers, no embedded arrays, and only a subset of Java definitely seems like an odd target. I would have expected at least two different full languages with acceptable porting overhead to be the MVP.
19.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
> The thing that the task manager doesn't tell you is whether or not these are shared components. It may be that the 662 MB used by the "Renderer" is shared between many Windows components, so killing that Weather app may
20.
by ack_complete 1mo ago
Odd that the Wikipedia article gives 2021 as the first description of this technique when it is far, far older than that. I worked with a software rasterizer JIT that used it in ~2003 and I thought similar techniques were used in the classi
21.
by ack_complete 2mo ago
For a while it looked like ARM was trying to call the ARMv8 vector instruction set ASIMD instead of NEON, but they seem to have thrown in the towel as the ARM Intrinsics Guide simply refers to Neon.
22.
by ack_complete 2mo ago
My own knowledge of GPU rasterization may be dated, but IIRC GPUs tend to rely on guard band clipping up to a guard band threshold before using geometric clipping. The guard band clipping involves rejecting 2D coarse rasterization blocks th
23.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
Opus Magnum is one of the most polished Zachtronics games IMO. The presentation is great. Exapunks can be pretty tricky with the distributed nature, which share some similarities with TIS-100. Like Opus Magnum, though, there are no restrict
24.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
Most games use the sound support that comes with their game engine or choice of sound system, so I don't think the lack of an STB version is an issue. Performance is more of a problem. Audiokinetic, the makers of the popular Wwise audi
25.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
Some tasks simply require more RAM. Compiling big software, for instance, wants as many CPU cores as it can get, and each compiler instance needs some amount of RAM to run efficiently. It's not unusual for a 32-core build to need 32-64
26.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
MSVC can do this for x86 if the cases are densely packed and the default is blocked: https://gcc.godbolt.org/z/GPo9fMx8G However, this optimization is less effective on modern CPUs with more powerful indirect predictor
27.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
Doesn't require any special flags, just hitting optimizer limits can do it with MSVC. https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1i36ahd/is_this_an_msv...
28.
by ack_complete 3mo ago
Some of this was automatically handled by the compiler and wouldn't have been an issue. Current x86-64 ABIs, for instance, require function entry to use specific forms annotated by metadata to support stack walking to support exception
29.
by ack_complete 4mo ago
There is an analogous situation in graphics with signed normalized formats. The solution there is that the R16_SNORM format maps -1 to +1 as [-32767, 32767] with -32768 being a special value (not normally emitted, and mostly but not always
30.
by ack_complete 4mo ago
It's both. Originally Visual C++ binaries built for DLL-based C runtime relied on MSVCRT.DLL and that was installed by the redist. Starting with Visual Studio .NET 2002, separate CRT DLLs starting with MSVCR70.DLL were used. MSVCRT.DLL

More ›