News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on FreeBSD replaces bubblesort with mergesort on SYSINTs, results in 100x speed. Parent comment

Re:FreeBSD replaces bubblesort with mergesort on SYSINTs, re... by JonChesterfield on Monday August 21, 2023 @11:40AM (#37211055)
Old colleague had some wisdom on this which stuck with me. Thanks Ben! Spoken at separate times.

- it's constant time or it's crap

- constant time means your best case is as slow as your worst case

In this case, constant time would be sorting it before the program runs.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FreeBSD replaces bubblesort with mergesort on SYSINTs, re... by Sharlin on Monday August 21, 2023 @02:07PM (#37213173)
> - constant time means your best case is as slow as your worst case

Which is in fact important in crypto code to prevent timing attacks.

[ Parent | on HN ]