There is one legit place in the code where memcpy was used as an
optimization trick. Was needed for older version of GCC, but now
it should be re-evaluated and checked if it still helps to have
that trick.
In other places it's somewhat lazy programming to zero out all
object members. That is absolutely unsafe, at the moment when
less trivial class is used as a member in that object things
will break.
Other cases were using memcpy into an object which comes from
an external library. We don't control that object, and we can
not guarantee it will always be safe for such memory tricks
and debugging bugs caused by such low level access is far fun.
Ideally we need to use more proper C++, but needs to be done with
big care, including benchmarks of each change, For now do
annoying but simple cast to void*.
In fact this was an existing issue when exceeding the number of available
closure, but it's more common now that we set the number to 0 for shadows
and emission
With a Titan Xp, reduces path trace local memory from 1092MB to 840MB.
Benchmark performance was within 1% with both RX 480 and Titan Xp.
Original patch was implemented by Sergey.
Differential Revision: https://developer.blender.org/D2249
While this compiler is not officially supported yet, getting it to work is
a nice thing because more and more AMD cards will fall under MESA driver.
It's also nice to use explicit comparison with NULL, which makes it more
clear whether variable is a boolean or pointer. Even Rust enforces this!
Patch by Ian Bruce with own modifications.
