Re: [Caml-list] Question about optimization

[Jon Harrop <jonathandeanharrop@googlemail.com>]

On Sunday 02 November 2008 02:52:49 Michał C wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm working on a physical based ray(path) tracer and the performance
> is one of my top priorities (just after the image quality).
> So I have a question about optimization: can You share some tips or
> maybe optimizing strategies to improve the speed of programs?
>
> here is my code: http://neos1.ovh.org/ray3.ml,

Now that I can profile it, the single biggest problem is obviously that seven 
of my cores are idle!

You have manually un-nested pattern matches which is not necessary. For 
example, this:

	| Leaf (prim, mat) ->
		match prim with
			| Triangle (tri) -> ray_triangle ro rd tri
			| Sphere (sph) -> ray_sphere ro rd sph

May be written:

  | Leaf (Triangle tri, mat) -> ray_triangle ro rd tri
  | Leaf (Sphere sph, mat) -> ray_sphere ro rd sph

The only obvious optimizations I can see are to use a faster random number 
generator and to inline the vector arithmetic by hand.

-- 
Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e