On 26/02/2014 21:46, Eero Tamminen wrote:
Couldn't that in some cases improve instruction cache utilization?
It does.With ELF, assembler instructions and read-only data are separated in 2 different areas (.text and .rodata). This is optimal since the instruction cache gets filled with instructions only, and the data cache only with data.
With our current a.out implementation, assembler instructions and read-only data are mixed in the same area (.text). As a result, both caches are partially filled with both instructions and data, wasting space, therefore performance.
However, I don't know how much performance gain we could get with that. Probably nothing extraordinary.
-- Vincent Rivière