Hi, [somewhat off-topic for this list, sorry] Philippe Lhoste wrote: > I confess I still reason in 8bit assembly language, I don't master > modern CPUs [...] Maybe you want to take the time to read the articles from year 2000 onwards (currently on the 2nd page): http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu.ars Recommended reading order: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/cpu2.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/caching.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium-1.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/pentium-2.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/p4andg4e.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/p4andg4e2.ars http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/core.ars After that, detailed advice for better coding can be found here: http://www.agner.org/assem/ http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25112.PDF Two weekends and you're up to speed with coding for modern CPUs. :-) Bye, Mike