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Optimize Game of Life grid update hot path#2

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copilot/improve-slow-code-efficiency
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Optimize Game of Life grid update hot path#2
Copilot wants to merge 3 commits intomainfrom
copilot/improve-slow-code-efficiency

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Copilot AI commented Dec 14, 2025

The Game of Life update loop was spending unnecessary time on bounds-checked neighbor counts for interior cells, reducing simulation throughput.

  • Grid update specialization: Separately process top/bottom rows with existing bounds-aware logic while handling interior rows via direct row pointers to eliminate per-cell bounds checks and Point construction overhead.
  • Edge safeguards: Guard bottom-row processing for single-row grids to avoid duplicate work.

Example of the optimized inner loop:

const bool* rowAbove = current.grid_.data() + ((x - 1) * SIZE);
const bool* row      = current.grid_.data() + (x * SIZE);
const bool* rowBelow = current.grid_.data() + ((x + 1) * SIZE);

for (int y = 1; y < SIZE - 1; ++y) {
    const int live = rowAbove[y - 1] + rowAbove[y] + rowAbove[y + 1]
                   + row[y - 1]                   + row[y + 1]
                   + rowBelow[y - 1] + rowBelow[y] + rowBelow[y + 1];
    destRow[y] = gameOfLife(row[y], live);
}
Original prompt

Identify and suggest improvements to slow or inefficient code


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Copilot AI and others added 2 commits December 14, 2025 03:36
Co-authored-by: fffaraz <895678+fffaraz@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: fffaraz <895678+fffaraz@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Identify and suggest improvements for inefficient code Optimize Game of Life grid update hot path Dec 14, 2025
Copilot AI requested a review from fffaraz December 14, 2025 03:38
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2 participants