Branchless programming

Remove unpredictable branches: conditional moves, arithmetic on comparison results, lookup instead of if-chains, sorting networks.

885proven techniques

28pitfalls: tried, then slower

495repositories

44from papers

Examples from real commits

JuliaLang/julia 3.4× Compute eps(x) branch-free by flipping the mantissa LSB via bit reinterpretation, then returning abs(x - y) for the neighbouring float y. proof: commit → borgbackup/borg 3.3× Replace data-dependent if() carry and borrow reductions with __builtin_add/sub_overflow, so the flag is turned into a mask (sbb/adc) with no branch. proof: commit → facebook/fbthrift 2.6× Branch-free varint encoding: compute size from clz via lookup tables and deposit payload bits with a pdep-equivalent (SVE2 BDEP on arm64) instead of branching on value size. proof: commit →

Languages

C++340
C231
Rust111
Python26
CUDA20
Go18

Hardware

x86322
CPU207
ARM83
NVIDIA GPU46
GPU42

Fields

data & compression214
general193
math150
graphics116
CPU95

Where these come from

Repositories with the most techniques on this topic in the database:

Voultapher/sort-research-rs · 12flagos-ai/FlagGems · 7WojciechMula/base64simd · 6zeux/meshoptimizer · 6torvalds/linux · 6simdutf/simdutf · 6golang/go · 6vortex-data/vortex · 5Lokathor/wide · 5google/snappy · 5

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