I have the utmost respect for the ffmpeg developers; writing ASM is a skill I do not possess. I do have to wonder, though, would it be easier for cross-platform compatibility to write in C instead. I have always understood that C generally compiles almost directly to assembly with little to no abstraction overhead, and it would not require platform-specific ASM code. What is the logic in choosing ASM over C? I have no doubt there is a good reason.

[–] Kushan@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

In 99 cases out of 100, you won't be able to hand craft assembly better than a good compiler can - partly due to compilers being much better and partly due to the skill level required. 20 or 30 years ago compilers weren't as good and a reasonably competent person could craft more optimised assembly but these days compilers are pretty damn good and you need some extra level of ability to best the compiler.

However, there's still that 1 time out of 100 and given how resource intensive ffmpeg is, it's worth spending that extra time to hyper optimise the code because it'll pay off massively.