We worked with the Intel guys, in my last gig. They were incredibly helpful.
They were an impressive lot, and they helped us out, quite a bit. They often sent engineers over, for weeks at a time, to help us optimize.
The cache thing was a 100X improvement thing, and it came from the oddest places. There's a lot of "that doesn't make sense!" stuff, with preserving caches.
I don't remember all the tricks, but we were constantly surprised.
One thing that saved us, was instrumentation. Intel had a bunch of utilities that they wrote, and that kept showing us that the clever thing we did, was not so clever.
They were an impressive lot, and they helped us out, quite a bit. They often sent engineers over, for weeks at a time, to help us optimize.
The cache thing was a 100X improvement thing, and it came from the oddest places. There's a lot of "that doesn't make sense!" stuff, with preserving caches.
I don't remember all the tricks, but we were constantly surprised.
One thing that saved us, was instrumentation. Intel had a bunch of utilities that they wrote, and that kept showing us that the clever thing we did, was not so clever.