Optimizing Code with GCC

Abstract

These days, compilers are pretty smart. They can perform all sorts of code transformations—from simple inlining to sophisticated register analysis—that make compiled code run faster. In most situations, faster is better than smaller, because disk space and memory are quite cheap for desktop users. However, for embedded systems small is often at least as important as fast because of a commonplace environment consisting of extreme memory constraints and no disk space, making code optimization a very important task.