The “Tonya Harding Solution” to computer benchmarks

… we knew we had to do more to truly earn those extra credit points. Luckily, I had one final optimization idea:

The Tonya Harding Solution: The benchmark program works by calling the optimized function, calling the naive function, and comparing the two times. And this gave me a truly devilish idea. I added some code to calc_depth_optimized that created a child process. That child process would wait for calc_depth_naive to start running, then send a SIGUSR1 signal to the benchmark process. That signal would interrupt calc_depth_naive and jump to a special signal handler function I'd installed:

void our_handler(int signal) {

// if you can't win the race, shoot your opponent in the legs

sleep(image_size * 4 / 10000);

}

So while we did implement a number of features that made our program faster, we achieved our final high score by making the naive version a whole lot slower. If only that 4 had been a 5 …

“CS 61C Performance Competition [1]”

I'll have to hand it to Carter Sande for literally beating the competition in benchmarking.

(Although it wasn't Tonya Harding who did the attack, but Shane Stant, hired by Harding's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly who attacked Nancy Kerrigan with a police baton and not a gun. Harding herself claims she had nothing to do with the attack.)

=> [1] https://carter.sande.duodecima.technology/cs61c-performance/

=> Gemini Mention this post | Contact the author