Re: Optimize glyph row clearing and copying routines

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 09:40:53 -0400
> From: John Yates <address@hidden>
> Cc: Dmitry Antipov <address@hidden>, Emacs developers <address@hidden>
> 
> It is true that the standard's definition of memcpy is in terms of copying
> a sequence of bytes.  It is also true that memcpy is one of the most
> important and most heavily optimized library functions.
> 
> These days any credible compiler has a means of determining that an
> invocation of a function named 'memcpy' is actually an invocation of the
> standard's memcpy.  E.g. gcc's exposed memcpy is an inline whose body
> simply calls __builtin_memcpy.

That's not the issue here.  Because this:

  struct foo *foo, *bar;
  ...
  *foo = *bar;

(which was the old code) is also implemented with a memcpy, whether
builtin or not.

The issue here is a _partial_ copy of a struct, starting with some
offset.  That offset can be aligned less favorably than the struct
itself, which will cause memcpy be less efficient.

The old code copied the entire struct, and then "fixed" a small number
of members that cannot be copied.