Marco wrote:
(4) decide if we have to use exception handling C++ constructs for arithmetic exceptions ( divide by zero, etc) or simply abort the program; this is essentially a matter of performance;
I didn't know aborting the program was more efficient than throwing an exception. Why not just invoke undefined behaviour if that allows the best efficiency?
(10) about fixed size big integer I had tought to something like this: template< unsigned int N > class big_int; where N are the number of bits which have to be used;
That could even be used to have portable types with a fixed size, since it can fall back to an existing type. However, the ability to choose the size at runtime would also be needed.
Question : is it possible to get good performance without implement the basic algorithms in assembler ?
I think some implementations don't use assembler and are quite efficient. Assembler is only a bonus.