title: Comparing performance of software implementations
body: <p>HI all,</p>
  
  <p>This is a more general question, but basically I wanna compare the performance of two multimedia software applications. Although they are doing the same thing, they are running on different platforms and also nothing is known about the implementation. I get quite some different performance figures and I am trying to reason about what could be the case for that. So far I came up with the following:</p>
  
  <p>Better performance due to software optimisations:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>loop-unrolling at the cost of higher code memory footprint</li>
  <li>pro-computation of results stored in memory at the cost of a higher data memory footprint</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Better performance due to the underlying hardware architectures</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>running at a higher clock speed</li>
  <li>offering better hardware support for an application</li>
  <li>better caching opportunities</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Can someone think of something else or is that all?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,
  Simon </p>