How slow (how many cycles) is calculating a square root?

Question

How slow (how many cycles) is calculating a square root? This came up in a molecular dynamics course where efficiency is important and taking unnecessary square roots had a

Answer 1

Square root is about 4 times slower than addition using -O2, or about 13 times slower without using -O2. Elsewhere on the net I found estimates of 50-100 cycles which may be true, but it's not a relative measure of cost that is very useful, so I threw together the code below to make a relative measurement. Let me know if you see any problems with the test code.

The code below was run on an Intel Core i3 under Windows 7 operating system and was compiled in DevC++ (which uses GCC). Your mileage may vary.

#include 
#include 
#include 

/*
Output using -O2:

1 billion square roots running time: 14738ms

1 billion additions running time   : 3719ms

Press any key to continue . . .

Output without -O2:

10 million square roots running time: 870ms

10 million additions running time   : 66ms

Press any key to continue . . .

Results:

Square root is about 4 times slower than addition using -O2,
            or about 13 times slower without using -O2
*/

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    const int cycles = 100000;
    const int subcycles = 10000;

    double squares[cycles];

    for ( int i = 0; i < cycles; ++i ) {
        squares[i] = rand();
    }

    std::clock_t start = std::clock();

    for ( int i = 0; i < cycles; ++i ) {
        for ( int j = 0; j < subcycles; ++j ) {
            squares[i] = sqrt(squares[i]);
        }
    }

    double time_ms = ( ( std::clock() - start ) / (double) CLOCKS_PER_SEC ) * 1000;

    std::cout << "1 billion square roots running time: " << time_ms << "ms" << std::endl;

    start = std::clock();

    for ( int i = 0; i < cycles; ++i ) {
        for ( int j = 0; j < subcycles; ++j ) {
            squares[i] = squares[i] + squares[i];
        }
    }

    time_ms = ( ( std::clock() - start ) / (double) CLOCKS_PER_SEC ) * 1000;

    std::cout << "1 billion additions running time   : " << time_ms << "ms" << std::endl;

    system("PAUSE");
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}