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Genetic Algorithms and Compiler Optimizations

Posted by michael on from the when-it-absolutely-positively-has-to-run-overnight dept.

mfago writes "Scott Robert Ladd has written an enlightening article and accompanying software package that utilizes genetic algorithms to optimize the optimization flags fed to a compiler. Those who have tried to squeeze the last drop of performance from a code know that it can be very difficult to determine the set of optimization flags beyond -O3 (with gcc for example) that yields the best performance. Lots of background links included in the article."

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Skepticism by wdavies · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It actually seems like a good idea.Some problems I can imagine are optimization flags may have non speed related side-effects?

    However, this seems like a great candidate for GA's - a fitness function (ie speed of execution), and a nice binary vector of atributes (flags).

    Interesting that the gains aren't that great it would seem to sugges that the flags don't do much :) or maybe the base-line is already close to optimal, and so it isnt a hard problem?

    But Kudos nevertheless. No expert in the GA field, so its possible someones tackled this before, but if they haven't, extra Kudos.

    Winton