Exponential operator

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Jimbob wrote:
> "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote in message 
> news:h5h3uf$23sg$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Lars T. Kyllingstad:
>>> He also proposed that the overload be called opPower.
>> I want to add to two small things to that post of mine:
>> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=95123
>>
>> The name opPow() may be good enough instead of opPower().
>>
>> And A^^3 may be faster than A*A*A when A isn't a simple number, so always 
>> replacing the
>> power with mults may be bad.
> 
> It wont be on x86. Multiplication has a latency of around 4 cycles whether 
> int or float, so x*x*x will clock around 12 cycles.

Yeah, but what's the throughput? With multiple ALUs you can get several 
multiplications fast, even though getting the first one incurs a latency.

Andrei