C - fastest method to swap two memory blocks of equal size?

Question

What is the fastest way to swap two non-overlapping memory areas of equal size? Say, I need to swap (t_Some *a) with (t_Some *b). Considering space-tim

Answer 1

Your best bet is to maximize registers usage so that when you read a temporary you don't end up with extra (likely cached) memory accesses. Number of registers will depend on a system and registers allocation (the logic that maps your variables onto actual registers) will depend on a compiler. So your best bet is I guess to expect only one register and expect its size to be the same as the pointer. Which boils down to a simple for-loop dealing with blocks interpreted as arrays of size_t.