No subject

    In many applications such as audio, video and graphics processing,
calculations 
    are done with floating point values and the final results converted to
integer.
    There are a number of ways of converting from floating point to integer
with the 
    C cast mechanism being the most commonly used. Unfortunately, casting
from float 
    or double to int on i386 can cause large performance hits when this
operation 
    is used frequently. 

    If the programmer considers the speed of the operation more important
that the 
    type of conversion between float and int, speed improvements of 6 to 10
times can
    be achieved on Pentium III and Athlon CPUs. It is highly likely this is
also the 
    case on other processors such as PowerPC. 

    This paper investigates the reasons why the C cast operation which is so
important 
    for many applications is so slow and provides an alternative which aims
to be
    as portable as possible. 

Hope people find this useful.

Cheers,
Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam at mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"These are the finest moments in (post)modern life, when satire is completly

indistinguishable from reality... I usually have to rely on the presidential

elections for such dada." -- frenomulax on Jesux a christian Linux distro.