Efficient C++ Performance Programming Techniques

Cross-Call Optimization

As we have already discussed, the performance advantages of avoiding expensive method invocations is only half of the inlining performance story. The other half is cross-call optimizations. Cross-call optimizations allow the compiler to perform source and machine level optimizations to a method based on a more expansive contextual view of its invocation. These optimizations generally take the form of doing things at compile-time to avoid the necessity of doing them at run-time; for example, simple things like converting

float x = 90.0;
---                       // nothing that changes x's value
float y = sin(x);

to

float x = 90.0;
---
float y = 1.0;      // sin(90) = 1

This example, perhaps unlikely within the context of a single method, can ...