Why is a boolean 1 byte and not 1 bit of size?
In C++, Why is a boolean 1 byte and not 1 bit of size? Why aren’t there types like a 4-bit or 2-bit … Read more
cpu-architecture
What is the difference between Trap and Interrupt?
What is the difference between Trap and Interrupt? If the terminology is different for different systems, then what do they mean on x86? … Read more
What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory?
I am wondering how much of Ulrich Drepper’s What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory from 2007 is still valid. Also I could … Read more
What is the purpose of the “Prefer 32-bit” setting in Visual Studio and how does it actually work?
It is unclear to me how the compiler will automatically know to compile for 64-bit when it needs to. How does it know … Read more
Difference between core and processor
What is the difference between a core and a processor? I’ve already looked for it on Google, but I only get definitions for … Read more
What is a retpoline and how does it work?
In order to mitigate against kernel or cross-process memory disclosure (the Spectre attack), the Linux kernel1 will be compiled with a new option, … Read more
Deoptimizing a program for the pipeline in Intel Sandybridge-family CPUs
I’ve been racking my brain for a week trying to complete this assignment and I’m hoping someone here can lead me toward the … Read more
How do I achieve the theoretical maximum of 4 FLOPs per cycle?
How can the theoretical peak performance of 4 floating point operations (double precision) per cycle be achieved on a modern x86-64 Intel CPU? … Read more
Why is processing a sorted array faster than processing an unsorted array?
Here is a piece of C++ code that shows some very peculiar behavior. For some strange reason, sorting the data (before the timed … Read more