leiradel

I was a new hire at a game development company. My first task was to optimize a function that was consuming more cycles than all the other ones. The function was responsible for dispatching Objective-C++ method calls.

After a quick debug session, the problem was clear: the methods to call was being searched using a linear search. I changed the search to use a hashtable and the function disappeared from the list of most CPU consuming functions.

After running both implementations for a couple of weeks to make sure my implementation was right, I made a PR, which wasn't approved. The manager said my change was too risky to go to production, even though the implementation was simple and I spent two weeks making sure it was ok. They're probably still using the linear search.

This is exactly what the linker script does: https://github.com/LdB-ECM/Raspberry-Pi/blob/master/Multicor...

The resulting binary is loaded as a whole to RAM, there are no intermediary representation of the executable like a PE or ELF, and there are no relocations; everything is already resolved during link time.

The .data section contents are already in place when the kernel.bin file is loaded by the GPU. This is made by the linker script.