Re: a.out binaries that are 66% faster than ELF
Eric Youngdale (eric@andante.jic.com)
Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:35:58 -0500
>The a.out assembly uses smaller alignments (2 vs. 4 for variables, 4 vs.
>16 for code); it uses leading underscores where the elf assembly does
>not. I would've put copies of the .s files on the web, but there's
>that pesky ITAR thing. Still, given the 386 was hardest hit, I expect
>that the smaller alignment padding wasn't the problem, and the underscore
>convention is purely a cosmetic naming thing. My bet is still on cache
>conflict misses. Anyone tried this on an MMX Pentium (bigger cache)?
I don't think it was the align of the code itself - it was the
alignment of the stack pointer which is done in crt0.
-Eric