Performance Tip: Dividing by the Reciprocal

If you do a lot of floating-point division operations in VB, you may want to optimize these operations by multiplying by the reciprocal value. For example, instead of performing this calculation:

X/Y

do this:

X * (1/Y)

You can see how this works in VB by adding the following code to a form in a new project:

Private Declare Function GetTickCount Lib "kernel32" () As Long
Const NORMAL As Double = 1453
Const RECIPROCAL As Double = 1 / NORMAL
Const TOTAL_COUNT As Long = 10000000


Private Sub NormalDivide()

On Error GoTo Error_Normal

Dim dblRes As Double
Dim lngC As Long
Dim lngStart As Long

lngStart = GetTickCount

For lngC = 1 To TOTAL_COUNT
    dblRes = Rnd / NORMAL
Next lngC

MsgBox "Total Time:  " & GetTickCount - lngStart

Exit Sub

Error_Normal:

MsgBox Err.Number & " - " & Err.Description

End Sub

You'll also need a DBR function that is identical to NormalDivide, except that the one line of code in the For...Next loop is:

dblRes = Rnd * RECIPROCAL

Or, if you're just lazy, click here and get a VB project with the code already typed in. I have seen consistent performance gains of 15% with the DBR function. However, before you start changing all the code where you do division, there's a bit of a catch. There are some rounding issues to be concerned about (for example, 3/3 = 1, but 3 * (0.333333) = 0.999999). See http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~cs354-2/lec.notes/arith.flpt.html and http://science.nas.nasa.gov/Pubs/TechReports/RNRreports/dbailey/pi/pi.html for more detailed information.