"bearophile" <bearophileh...@lycos.com> wrote in message news:h5h3uf$23s...@digitalmars.com... > Lars T. Kyllingstad: >> He also proposed that the overload be called opPower. > > I want to add to two small things to that post of mine: > http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=95123 > > The name opPow() may be good enough instead of opPower(). > > And A^^3 may be faster than A*A*A when A isn't a simple number, so always > replacing the > power with mults may be bad.
It wont be on x86. Multiplication has a latency of around 4 cycles whether int or float, so x*x*x will clock around 12 cycles. The main instruction needed for pow, F2XM1, costs anywhere from 50 cycles to 120, depending on the cpu. And then you need to do a bunch of other stuff to make F2XM1 handle different bases.