Establishing a Performance Baseline

To set a performance baseline for the improvements that follow in this tutorial, build your project with these settings:

1. Select Project > Properties. The project property pages window appears.

2. Select Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Optimization > General > .

3. Select C/C++ > Optimization > Intel Specific > Interprocedural Optimization > No.

4. Select Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Language > Intel Specific > Enable C99 Support > Yes.

   This example uses a variable length array (VLA), and therefore, must be compiled with the /Qstd=c99 option.

5. Select Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Code Generation > Floating Point Model > Fast (/fp:fast).

   The /fp:precise option sets the compiler to aggressively optimize floating point arithmetic operations. Using the /fp:precise or /fp:strict options may limit opportunities for auto vectorization.

6. Rebuild the project, then run the executable (Debug > Start Without Debugging). Record the execution time reported in the output. This is the baseline against which subsequent improvements will be measured.