Why set zero in zero.c rather than use xor_n

[Torbjörn Granlund]

Vincent Lefevre <vincent at vinc17.net> writes:

  Your test is wrong because after one iteration, the data will be
  in the cache. I mean that the first call may be much slower than
  the subsequent calls. And in practice, mpn_zero will be just
  called once on a given object. So only the first call matters.
  Moreover "rp[i] = 0;" does not need to read data, which is better
  for the cache. Testing on real applications would give more
  meaningful results.

The iteration count presumably hides the initial cache effects.

But comparing function A and B for a single small operand size tells us
very little.

Now it is true that mpn_zero runs far from optimally, since it is
written in C, although typically inlined.  I am not sure it is important
enough to write in asm, though.

-- 
Torbjörn
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