[ODE] SIGSEGV in dSolveLCP() at ode/src/lcp.cpp:1137

[Jon Watte]

> > Branches are evil. Think of each branch as costing you 40 arithmetic ops.

> Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification.  On any modern processor, a
> predicted branch is almost free, and I don't think a mispredicted one costs
> quite that much.

How modern do you consider the Springdale Pentium IV to be?

Tomshardware benchmarked that against the Northwood, and at the same MHz, the Springdale is SLOWER than the (older) Northwood; probably attributable to the fact that their pipeline is deeper (on the order of 40 stages compared to about 30).

Yes, those branches may predict well. But my experience is, branchless is vastly preferrable, because then you have guarantees.

Cheers,

			/ h+