Loop nest optimization

Can speeding up your computer make tasks quicker?

Imagine you're baking cookies and need to mix ingredients repeatedly. Each time you mix, you have to go back and forth to grab more ingredients, slowing you down.

Loop unrolling speeds up your computer by reducing the number of trips back and forth to grab ingredients. It's like having all the ingredients ready next to your mixing bowl.

Example

If you normally mix 10 batches of cookies, unrolling the loop means you mix 20 batches at once, cutting down the trips you need to make.

Remember this

Loop unrolling reduces the overhead of repeatedly fetching data, making tasks faster.

Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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loop unrolling does: trades code size for reduced loop overhead

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