Message 73624 - Python tracker
In this patch x_mul(a, b) uses fewer bit operations for a != b, asymptotically half of them. On the three computers I tried the speed-up is around 5% for size=4 and it increases up to 45-60% just below the Karatsuba cutoff, then it decreases a bit after this cutoff (on one computer the speed-up is only 16% after KARATSUBA_CUTOFF=70, but raising the cutoff to 140, for which with the current code the multiplication is also faster, the speed-up is 45%).