Micro-optimization of floating-point operations
William J. Dally · ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News · 1989
This paper describes micro-optimization, a technique for reducing the operation count and time required to perform floating-point calculations. Micro-optimization involves breaking floating-point operations into their constituent micro-operations and optimizing the resulting code. Exposing micro-operations to the compiler creates many opportunities for optimization. Redundant normalization operations can be eliminated or combined. Also, scheduling micro-operations separately allows dependent operations to be partially overlapped. A prototype expression compiler has been written to evaluate a number of micro-optimizations. On a set of benchmark expressions operation count is reduced by 33% and execution time is reduced by 40%.