虽然我喜欢Mike Dunlavey的回答，但事实上这是一个很好的答案，并且有支持的例子，我认为它可以简单地表达出来:

首先找出哪些事情最耗费时间，并了解原因。

它是时间消耗的识别过程，可以帮助您了解必须在哪里改进算法。这是我能找到的唯一一个全面的语言不可知论答案，这个问题已经被认为是完全优化的。同时假设您希望在追求速度的过程中独立于体系结构。

因此，虽然算法可能被优化了，但它的实现可能没有。标识可以让您知道哪个部分是哪个部分:算法或实现。所以，占用时间最多的就是你审查的首选对象。但是既然你说你想把最后的%挤出来，你可能还想检查一下较小的部分，那些你一开始没有仔细检查过的部分。

最后，对实现相同解决方案的不同方法的性能数据进行一些尝试和错误，或者可能的不同算法，可以带来有助于识别浪费时间和节省时间的见解。

HPH, asoudmove。

以下是我使用的一些快速而粗糙的优化技术。我认为这是“第一关”优化。

了解时间都花在了什么地方。是文件IO吗?是CPU时间吗?是因为网络吗?是数据库吗?如果IO不是瓶颈，优化IO是没有用的。

了解您的环境了解在哪里进行优化通常取决于开发环境。例如，在VB6中，通过引用传递比通过值传递慢，但是在C和c++中，通过引用传递要快得多。在C语言中，如果返回代码表明失败，尝试一些东西并做一些不同的事情是合理的，而在Dot Net中，捕获异常比尝试前检查有效条件要慢得多。

在频繁查询的数据库字段上构建索引。你几乎总是可以用空间来换取速度。

在要优化的循环内部，我避免了必须进行任何查找。找到循环外的偏移量和/或索引，并重用循环内的数据。

最小化IO尝试以一种减少必须读或写的次数的方式进行设计，特别是在网络连接上

减少抽象代码必须通过的抽象层越多，它就越慢。在关键循环内部，减少抽象(例如，揭示避免额外代码的低级方法)

对于带有用户界面的项目，生成一个新线程来执行较慢的任务使应用程序感觉反应更快，尽管不是。

你通常可以用空间来换取速度。如果有计算或其他密集的操作，看看是否可以在进入关键循环之前预先计算一些信息。

最后几个%是一个非常CPU和应用程序依赖的东西....

缓存架构不同，有些芯片有片上内存 你可以直接映射，ARM的(有时)有一个矢量 单位，SH4是一个有用的矩阵操作码。有GPU吗 也许一个着色器是可行的。TMS320非常 对循环中的分支敏感(因此分离循环和 如果可能的话，将条件移到室外)。

名单在....上但这类事情真的是 最后的手段……

编译x86，并运行Valgrind/Cachegrind对代码 进行适当的性能分析。或者德州仪器的 CCStudio有一个贴心的侧写器。然后你就知道在哪里了 关注……

我大半辈子都在这里度过。大致的方法是运行你的分析器并记录它:

Cache misses. Data cache is the #1 source of stalls in most programs. Improve cache hit rate by reorganizing offending data structures to have better locality; pack structures and numerical types down to eliminate wasted bytes (and therefore wasted cache fetches); prefetch data wherever possible to reduce stalls. Load-hit-stores. Compiler assumptions about pointer aliasing, and cases where data is moved between disconnected register sets via memory, can cause a certain pathological behavior that causes the entire CPU pipeline to clear on a load op. Find places where floats, vectors, and ints are being cast to one another and eliminate them. Use __restrict liberally to promise the compiler about aliasing. Microcoded operations. Most processors have some operations that cannot be pipelined, but instead run a tiny subroutine stored in ROM. Examples on the PowerPC are integer multiply, divide, and shift-by-variable-amount. The problem is that the entire pipeline stops dead while this operation is executing. Try to eliminate use of these operations or at least break them down into their constituent pipelined ops so you can get the benefit of superscalar dispatch on whatever the rest of your program is doing. Branch mispredicts. These too empty the pipeline. Find cases where the CPU is spending a lot of time refilling the pipe after a branch, and use branch hinting if available to get it to predict correctly more often. Or better yet, replace branches with conditional-moves wherever possible, especially after floating point operations because their pipe is usually deeper and reading the condition flags after fcmp can cause a stall. Sequential floating-point ops. Make these SIMD.

我还喜欢做一件事:

将编译器设置为输出程序集清单，并查看它为代码中的热点函数发出了什么。所有那些聪明的优化，“一个好的编译器应该能够自动为你做”?实际的编译器可能不会执行这些操作。我见过GCC发出真正的WTF代码。

减少可变大小(在嵌入式系统中)

如果您的变量大小大于特定体系结构上的单词大小，则会对代码大小和速度产生重大影响。例如，如果你有一个16位系统，经常使用一个长int变量，然后意识到它永远不能超出范围(−32.768…32.767)考虑将其减少到短int。

从我的个人经验来看，如果一个程序已经准备好或几乎准备好了，但是我们意识到它占用了目标硬件程序内存的110%或120%，那么对变量进行快速归一化通常可以解决这个问题。

到这个时候，优化算法或部分代码本身可能会变得令人沮丧的徒劳:

重新组织整个结构，程序就不再像预期的那样工作，或者至少引入了许多错误。 做一些聪明的技巧:通常你花了很多时间优化一些东西，并发现代码大小没有或很小的减少，因为编译器无论如何都会优化它。

Many people make the mistake of having variables which exactly store the numerical value of a unit they use the variable for: for example, their variable time stores the exact number of milliseconds, even if only time steps of say 50 ms are relevant. Maybe if your variable represented 50 ms for each increment of one, you would be able to fit into a variable smaller or equal to the word size. On an 8 bit system, for example, even a simple addition of two 32-bit variables generates a fair amount of code, especially if you are low on registers, while 8 bit additions are both small and fast.

我花了一些时间优化在低带宽和长延迟网络(例如卫星、远程、离岸)上运行的客户端/服务器业务系统，并能够通过相当可重复的过程实现一些显著的性能改进。

Measure: Start by understanding the network's underlying capacity and topology. Talking to the relevant networking people in the business, and make use of basic tools such as ping and traceroute to establish (at a minimum) the network latency from each client location, during typical operational periods. Next, take accurate time measurements of specific end user functions that display the problematic symptoms. Record all of these measurements, along with their locations, dates and times. Consider building end-user "network performance testing" functionality into your client application, allowing your power users to participate in the process of improvement; empowering them like this can have a huge psychological impact when you're dealing with users frustrated by a poorly performing system. Analyze: Using any and all logging methods available to establish exactly what data is being transmitted and received during the execution of the affected operations. Ideally, your application can capture data transmitted and received by both the client and the server. If these include timestamps as well, even better. If sufficient logging isn't available (e.g. closed system, or inability to deploy modifications into a production environment), use a network sniffer and make sure you really understand what's going on at the network level. Cache: Look for cases where static or infrequently changed data is being transmitted repetitively and consider an appropriate caching strategy. Typical examples include "pick list" values or other "reference entities", which can be surprisingly large in some business applications. In many cases, users can accept that they must restart or refresh the application to update infrequently updated data, especially if it can shave significant time from the display of commonly used user interface elements. Make sure you understand the real behaviour of the caching elements already deployed - many common caching methods (e.g. HTTP ETag) still require a network round-trip to ensure consistency, and where network latency is expensive, you may be able to avoid it altogether with a different caching approach. Parallelise: Look for sequential transactions that don't logically need to be issued strictly sequentially, and rework the system to issue them in parallel. I dealt with one case where an end-to-end request had an inherent network delay of ~2s, which was not a problem for a single transaction, but when 6 sequential 2s round trips were required before the user regained control of the client application, it became a huge source of frustration. Discovering that these transactions were in fact independent allowed them to be executed in parallel, reducing the end-user delay to very close to the cost of a single round trip. Combine: Where sequential requests must be executed sequentially, look for opportunities to combine them into a single more comprehensive request. Typical examples include creation of new entities, followed by requests to relate those entities to other existing entities. Compress: Look for opportunities to leverage compression of the payload, either by replacing a textual form with a binary one, or using actual compression technology. Many modern (i.e. within a decade) technology stacks support this almost transparently, so make sure it's configured. I have often been surprised by the significant impact of compression where it seemed clear that the problem was fundamentally latency rather than bandwidth, discovering after the fact that it allowed the transaction to fit within a single packet or otherwise avoid packet loss and therefore have an outsize impact on performance. Repeat: Go back to the beginning and re-measure your operations (at the same locations and times) with the improvements in place, record and report your results. As with all optimisation, some problems may have been solved exposing others that now dominate.

In the steps above, I focus on the application related optimisation process, but of course you must ensure the underlying network itself is configured in the most efficient manner to support your application too. Engage the networking specialists in the business and determine if they're able to apply capacity improvements, QoS, network compression, or other techniques to address the problem. Usually, they will not understand your application's needs, so it's important that you're equipped (after the Analyse step) to discuss it with them, and also to make the business case for any costs you're going to be asking them to incur. I've encountered cases where erroneous network configuration caused the applications data to be transmitted over a slow satellite link rather than an overland link, simply because it was using a TCP port that was not "well known" by the networking specialists; obviously rectifying a problem like this can have a dramatic impact on performance, with no software code or configuration changes necessary at all.