How to measure program speed?

[Grimes]

Hi there Can someone please help me. I am looking for a way to measure the speed of my program's execution. I am busy writing a simulation that needs to run as fast as possible and I want to make sure that the algorithms used are the fastest possible. Is there a way or a tool that can be used to measure the speed, like the amount of CPU clock cycles needed to complete an algorithm. thank you in advance. Riaan.

KOM UIT DAAAAA!!!

[David Crow]

Have you tried the profiler that comes with Visual Studio?

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

[Grimes]

I am not that familiar with visual studio, but I see there is a reference in the help to the profiler. It seems that it would be able to do what I want. I will look in to the profiler. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

KOM UIT DAAAAA!!!

[_Superman_]

Not sure if this is what you want but you could use high resolution timer functions like QueryPerformanceCounter/QueryPerformanceFrequency before and after a piece of executing code and compare their values.

«_Superman_» I love work. It gives me something to do between weekends.
Microsoft MVP (Visual C++)

[Grimes]

Hi How would one use this?

QueryFrequencyCounter(Begin)
...CODE...
QueryFrequencyCounter(END)
TIME = END - BEGIN;

What is the unit of the counter? milliseconds or microseconds or clock cycles? I will give it a try, thank you!

KOM UIT DAAAAA!!!

[David Crow]

Grimes wrote:

What is the unit of the counter? milliseconds or microseconds or clock cycles?

See here and here.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson

"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons

[_Superman_]

Here is an interesting blog - QueryPerformanceCounter counts elapsed time, not CPU cycles[^]

«_Superman_» I love work. It gives me something to do between weekends.
Microsoft MVP (Visual C++)

[Member 4194593]

Check the Masm32 forum. In the Laboratory there is a huge amount of information about timing, a Macro to set up the timing, and what it takes to get accurate results.

[Grimes]

Thanks!!! That counter macro seems to be counting the CPU cycles for a block of code. That does seem like the best way of determining the efficiency of a block of code, unlike time, that can vary greatly on different machines. thanks for the help!

KOM UIT DAAAAA!!!