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Measuring your program speed correctly
- Measuring program speed accurately involves considering nanosecond precision, especially with CPUs operating at GHz frequencies.
- The time command in POSIX systems provides real, user, and system times for processes, giving insights into program performance.
- Using gettimeofday and getrusage syscalls in C/C++ allows for measuring CPU and system resource usage with microsecond precision.
- Clock_t provides a more granular measurement based on hardware clock ticks, offering microsecond precision for timing computations.
- To achieve nanosecond precision, C++'s chrono library with high_resolution_clock can be utilized for accurate time measurements.
- The Time Stamp Counter (TSC) on x86 processors offers cycle-level precision using the rdtsc assembly instruction.
- By leveraging TSC, one can achieve nanosecond level precision for program execution time, surpassing other timing methods.
- Comparing different timing methods showcases the trade-offs between precision and overhead in measuring program performance.
- Optimizing code and utilizing lower-level hardware-specific instructions like rdtsc can significantly enhance timing precision and accuracy.
- Achieving precise timing measurements is crucial for understanding and optimizing program performance, from milliseconds to nanoseconds.
- Overall, the journey from millisecond to nanosecond precision highlights the importance of choosing the right timing method for accurate performance assessment.
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