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The 4% improvement doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

On a general note, instructions like division and square root are roughly equal to trig functions in cycle count on modern CPUs. So, replacing one with the other will not confer much benefit, as evidenced from the results. They're all typically implemented using LUTs, and it's hard to beat the performance of an optimized LUT, which is basically a multiplexer connected to some dedicated memory cells in hardware.

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> The 4% improvement doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

People have gotten PhDs for smaller optimizations. I know. I've worked with them.

> instructions like division and square root are roughly equal to trig functions in cycle count on modern CPUs.

What's the x86-64 opcode for arcsin?

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