"[C is] optimised for speed, as long as your target is basically a fast PDP-11" http://t.co/CUPgG4GBcO -- limitations of C optimisations
miniblog.
Related Posts
What's your favourite file checksum when you don't need cryptographic strength?
md5sum is convenient (it's installed on most systems), but it was originally intended to be secure. I just want a fast content check.
(Or is sha256sum sufficiently optimised that it doesn't matter?)
The efficiency of wasm is really impressive. An optimised build of Stockfish with POPCNT evaluates positions at ~1500kn/s on a single core of machine. By contrast, the wasm build on https://lichess.org/analysis/r4rk1/p5b1/2p2n2/1p2p3/4P2q/P1N1B3/1PP1B1Q1/2KR3n_w#0 can compute ~42kn/s in the browser for the same position!
Fabulous article on benchmarking JIT optimised VMs: performance can vary massively, warmups can be unpredictable, optimisation sometimes hurts perf and you may not even reach a steady state!