Case studies with before/after optimizations

[AveryClapp]

Feature Description

Documented case studies showing real-world optimization examples with Cache Explorer.

Case Studies

1. Image Processing Pipeline

   • Before: 65% L1 hit rate
   • Problem: Row-major vs column-major access
   • Fix: Transpose + blocking
   • After: 92% L1 hit rate
   • Speedup: 2.3x

2. Ray Tracer Optimization

   • Before: High L3 miss rate
   • Problem: Random BVH traversal
   • Fix: Cache-oblivious tree layout
   • After: 40% fewer L3 misses
   • Speedup: 1.6x

3. Database Query Engine

   • Before: False sharing in parallel hash join
   • Problem: Shared counter on cache line
   • Fix: Per-thread counters + padding
   • After: 0 false sharing events
   • Speedup: 3.1x (8 cores)

4. Game Physics Simulation

   • Before: Poor prefetcher utilization
   • Problem: Random particle access
   • Fix: Sort particles by spatial locality
   • After: 85% prefetch accuracy
   • Speedup: 1.9x

Format

Each case study includes:

• Problem description
• Initial analysis (screenshots)
• Optimization approach
• Final analysis (comparison mode)
• Performance measurements
• Source code (GitHub)

Publishing

• docs/case-studies/ directory
• Blog post for each
• Tweet thread with highlights
• HackerNews/Reddit submission

Files

• docs/case-studies/image-processing.md
• docs/case-studies/ray-tracer.md
• examples/case-studies/ (source code)

Goal

Demonstrate real-world value and teach optimization techniques