Switch statement optimization

[Christian Hildner]

Joern RENNECKE schrieb:

> In http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2006-07/msg00156.html, your wrote:
>
> We could use a cheap hash and base start compare / branch trees in 
> every hash bin.
> Say we have a 16 k range, 200 nodes, and want to keep the hash 
> bin/node ratio between 2 and 4.
> Let i be the switch argument.  Then we can calculate a 9 bit hash as
> (i ^ (x << n)) & 0x3fffffff, where n is a value between 5 and 9.  We 
> can pick the one which produces the flattest
> average search trees.
> Note that we no longer need to check that i is in range, as for 
> ordinary switch dispatch tables.  

What I suggest is to implement a cost-estimation based decision. This 
should include an architecture dependent modelling that could deliver an 
exact cost (in terms of size) for size-optimization and as well a good 
approximation for speed. For example in my case of 1500 labels inside 
the 16K range I would perfer a branch table instead of a binary compare 
tree. The size of the table is 16K * 4/8 bytes and this is really ok for 
a huge program. The frequently used entries are likely to be in the 
cache, so I expect the whole thing to perform well. However if I would 
optimize it for my case that may not help in general? So all 
modifications should be verified with a common standard benchmark like 
SPEC. Is there someone on the list who wants to support me with these 
tests or may deliver models for common architectures?

Christian