[Home Page] - [Reviews Main]

Inner Loops by R Booth Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-47960-5       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 364pp+CD       Price: £32-95

Categories:   optimization

Reviewed by Brian Bramer in C Vu 9-6 (Sep 1997)

The first part of the book reviews the hardware capabilities of Intel processors (486, Pentium, Pentium Pro & MMX), techniques for converting 16- bit code to 32-bit, assembly language programming, prediction of performance under C, reformulating and optimising algorithms, etc. with the overall aim of identifying what is critical and how performance may be enhanced. The second part presents example algorithms (developed using the techniques of part one) for memory manipulation (e.g. looking at how cache strategies affect performance), generating primes, data structures (lists, trees, hashing, sorting), compression, matrix manipulation, etc. Throughout plenty of practical tips are given together with example code (which is on the CD).

Hitting problems with faster hardware does not always work and one's customers may not be able to buy the latest Pentium. This book gives sound practical advice from someone who has faced real world problems and will be of use to system developers, algorithm designers and researchers who need to get the best performance out of Pentium platforms. One of my Ph.D research students who developed stereoscopic image processing routines a few years ago would certainly have found this book very useful. Readers need to be proficient in Intel 8086 family assembly language programming.