> I didn't use C99's complex number support because -- continuing to follow the approach Handmade Hero -- I intended to port this code directly into SIMD intrinsics.
Which makes me wonder - do GCC and/or Clang compile complex arithmetic so SIMD instructions?
A couple of years back, I rewrote a mandelbrot renderer from C89 to C99 and used complex numbers, and I noticed that it ran faster afterwards (not dramatically so, but I noticed the difference). I never checked, though, if the compiler emitted SIMD instructions, and sometime since I lost the source code to a faulty hard disk and was too lazy to write another one.
Which makes me wonder - do GCC and/or Clang compile complex arithmetic so SIMD instructions?
A couple of years back, I rewrote a mandelbrot renderer from C89 to C99 and used complex numbers, and I noticed that it ran faster afterwards (not dramatically so, but I noticed the difference). I never checked, though, if the compiler emitted SIMD instructions, and sometime since I lost the source code to a faulty hard disk and was too lazy to write another one.