What is faster: double or float? For a long time, I’ve been simply using floats - I thought they’re faster and smaller than doubles… it is also an obvious choice in graphics programming.

But what about doubles? Are they that bad? It seems that the answers is not that obvious!

The Tests  

Here’s my test scenario:

  • Allocate ARR\SIZE numbers
  • Initialize elements with a simple pattern
  • Compute some value, use different arithmetic operations
 // test float: 
float *floatArray = (float *)malloc(ARR\SIZE * sizeof(float)); 
START_TIME(); 
for (int i = 0; i < ARR_SIZE; ++i) 
{ 
    floatArray[i] = (float)(i*i)/100.0f; 
}
 
for (int i = 0; i < ARR_SIZE; ++i) 
{ 
    float temp = 0.0f; 
    for (int j = 0; j < NUM_ITER; ++j) 
    { 
        temp += floatArray[j]*2.0f; 
    } 
    temp = sqrtf(temp); 
    floatArray[i] = temp; 
} 
END_TIME(); 

free(floatArray);

And the double code:

// test double: 
double *doubleArray = (double *)malloc(ARR_SIZE * sizeof(double)); 
START_TIME(); 
for (int i = 0; i < ARR_SIZE; ++i) 
{ 
    doubleArray[i] = (double)(i*i)/100.0; 
}
 
for (int i = 0; i < ARR_SIZE; ++i) 
{ 
    double temp = 0.0; 
    for (int j = 0; j < NUM_ITER; ++j) 
    { 
        temp += doubleArray[j]*2.0; 
    } 
    temp = sqrt(temp); 
    doubleArray[i] = temp; 
} 

END_TIME(); 

free(doubleArray);

The Results   

Core 2 Duo T7300 @2.0Ghz  
Visual Studio 2008, Release, /Ox, /fp:precise

processing float: 308 msec 
processing double: 92 msec 

Release, /Ox, /fp:precise, /arch:SSE2

processing float: 307 msec 
processing double: 96 msec 

Release, /Ox, /fp:fast, /arch:SSE2

processing float: 111 msec 
processing double: 93 msec

Wow… what a huge difference between standard version and SSE2! And moreover it seems that double type is sometimes even triple times faster that single precision! Worth considering… and worth more and proper testing!

The Reason  

the main problem: conversions

Below there is asm code generated by VS (Release, /Ox, /fp:precise, /arch:SSE2):

// for float 
; 35 : for (int j = 0; j < NUM_ITER; ++j)
; 36 : { ; 37 : temp += floatArray[j]*2.0f; 
movss xmm3, 
DWORD PTR [eax-8] **cvtps2pd** xmm3, 
xmm3 cvtss2sd xmm1, 
xmm1 mulsd xmm3, 
xmm0 addsd xmm3, 
xmm1 xorps xmm1, 
xmm1 cvtpd2ps xmm1, 
xmm3 movss xmm3, 
DWORD PTR [eax-4] ...

And for double:

// for double 
; 59 : for (int j = 0; j < NUM_ITER; ++j) 
; 60 : { ; 61 : temp += doubleArray[j]*2.0; 
movsd xmm3, 
QWORD PTR [eax-16] mulsd xmm3,
xmm0 addsd xmm3, 
xmm1 movsd xmm1, 
QWORD PTR [eax-8] ...

Listing for floats is longer because of cvtps2pd and cvtss2sd instructions that converts single floating point value into double precision floating point value… and the reverse way.

Floating point calculations are usually performed using Double precision (or even 80 bit precision ). The difference is seen only in Release version, for Debug I got: 317 for float and 315 for double.