I was in the demoscene long ago and that kind of optimisation is definitely in the ballpark of what we did: optimize algorithm down to machine code level (and additionally, cheat like hell to make you believe we ran the algorithm for real :-)).
But to be honest, I wonder what algorithm they implement. I have read the code for 2 minutes, and it sound like random forest prediction. Anyone knows what the code does ?
Yeah, I assume it was partly chosen since the problem structure provides some convenient hooks for selectively introducing subtle and less subtle inefficiencies in the baseline algorithm that match common optimization patterns.
But to be honest, I wonder what algorithm they implement. I have read the code for 2 minutes, and it sound like random forest prediction. Anyone knows what the code does ?