Thread: High-performance call to runtime target.

Hi,

Sort of an advanced request here. I have a simulation system that schedules tasks to be run at some point in the future (in iterations, not real time). The system must support calling any member function on any kind of object, and it would be nice if it supported calling any global function too. With one exception: all the called functions return void and (aside from the this pointer) take no arguments.

I'm currently using boost::function for this, but with 10000 scheduled tasks, performance goes down the drain. Profiling shows that 80% of the time is spent in the boost::function call mechanism.

So my question: does anyone have an idea for a high-performance calling system that can do exactly what I need, no more, no less? The system must be portable - targets include (but should not be limited to) x86, amd64, and IBM Power4 and 5 architectures. (That's two 32-bit, two 64-bit architectures, two little-endian, two big-endian, with completely different instruction sets and possibly calling conventions.)

I do not pretend to have an answer. However, I have been studying callback mechanisms for fun in between developing my project.
I wasn't aware of boost::function. And as such, I have been using libsigc. http://libsigc.sourceforge.net/

I'm very happy with it and it boosts (pun intended) a very high performance according to the authors.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will take a look at it and probably profile with it.
As far as I can see, though, it's implemented the same way as boost::function.

If you don't mind, CornedBee, let me know what you think of it when you are done.
Whith the newly gained realization of Boost::function (and boost::signals, btw) I would like to know an expert opinion if I should move to boost.