This patch reimplements std::chrono::year::is_leap(). Leap year check is
ubiquitously implemented (including here) as:
y % 4 == 0 && (y % 100 != 0 || y % 400 == 0).
The rationale being that testing divisibility by 4 first implies an earlier
return for 75% of the cases, therefore, avoiding the needless calculations of
y % 100 and y % 400. Although this fact is true, it does not take into account
the cost of branching. This patch, instead, tests divisibility by 100 first:
(y % 100 != 0 || y % 400 == 0) && y % 4 == 0.
It is certainly counterintuitive that this could be more efficient since among
the three divisibility tests (4, 100 and 400) the one by 100 is the only one
that can never provide a definitive answer and a second divisibility test (by 4
or 400) is always required. However, measurements [1] in x86_64 suggest this is
3x more efficient! A possible explanation is that checking divisibility by 100
first implies a split in the execution path with probabilities of (1%, 99%)
rather than (25%, 75%) when divisibility by 4 is checked first. This decreases
the entropy of the branching distribution which seems to help prediction.
Given that y belongs to [-32767, 32767] [time.cal.year.members], a more
efficient algorithm [2] to check divisibility by 100 is used (instead of
y % 100 != 0). Measurements suggest that this optimization improves performance
by 20%.
The patch adds a test that exhaustively compares the result of this
implementation with the ubiquitous one for all y in [-32767, 32767]. Although
its completeness, the test completes in a matter of seconds.
References:
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/60646967/1137388
[2] https://accu.org/journals/overload/28/155/overload155.pdf#page=16
libstdc++-v3/ChangeLog:
* include/std/chrono (year::is_leap): New implementation.
* testsuite/std/time/year/2.cc: New test.