Loop Unrolling

Definitions

1. A compiler or manual optimization that replicates the body of a loop multiple times per iteration, reducing the overhead of branch instructions, loop counter increments, and condition checks while improving instruction-level parallelism.

   In plain English: Instead of doing one thing per lap around a loop, you do four things per lap so you spend less time checking if you're done.

   Example: "The compiler unrolled the inner loop 4x, which eliminated enough branch mispredictions to double throughput on that buffer copy."

Related Terms

• lazy loading
• Cache
• Profile
• Vectorization
• Hot Path
• JIT Compiler
• Object File
• Optimization
• Parse Tree
• Parser Generator
• Profile Guided Optimization
• Stack Machine
• Term Rewriting
• Undefined Behavior
• Unrolling