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The Weird Concept of Branchless Programming

(sanixdk.xyz)
170 points judicious | 1 comments | 28 Sep 25 16:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rmnclmnt ◴[28 Sep 25 18:00 UTC] No.45406426[source]▶
Great article, triggers some memories.

When you get to think about branchless programming, especially for SIMD optimizations in the real world, you always learn a lot and it’s as if you get a +1 level on your algorithmic skills. The hardest part then is make sure the tricks are clearly laidout so that someone else can take it from here next time

replies(1): >>45409116 #
kccqzy ◴[28 Sep 25 23:53 UTC] No.45409116[source]▶
It also triggered some memories for me too. A college professor wanted to teach all the bit manipulating stuff and gave an assignment where students had to transform branchy code into branchless code using shifts and bit operators. Had a lot of fun doing that.
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1. rmnclmnt ◴[29 Sep 25 09:01 UTC] No.45411675[source]▶
Yeah this is the kind of thinking opening up new heights when you get it!

These type of exercises should be mandatory for all compute intensive related jobs, especially for all data science people (i know some of them know this stuff but that does not seem to be the majority)