Objective-C graphics drawing speed

Invoking the fillRect method of NSBezierPath to draw each and every pixel is crazy. If you must draw things a single pixel at a time, then draw into your own buffer, and when it's ready to display, then you send it into OS X's highly vector-oriented hardware-accelerated OpenGL-based graphics system. If you're not going to take advantage of any of the advanced drawing primitives offered by Quartz, then don't make a million calls to Quartz per frame. If you don't want to implement the blitting yourself, use SDL or Allegro. But you should really consider whether every letter needs to be drawn pixel-by-pixel. OS X's graphics system is very good at compositing images, as that is its primary purpose. And by the way, why can't you just use normal text-rendering methods and bundle in your own font file?

I strongly agree that this method of drawing is insanity. Chances are there is a better way to do this. Toggling the individual pixels of a bitmap then calling a single bind texture and a single draw is the first thing that comes to mind.

Assuming you will not or can not change this algorithm, from your profiling info it looks like you are spending all your time sending messages. The first thing I would do to speed it up is pull it all into a single ugly monster method instead of breaking it out into three. Yes it's ugly and stupid, but it would effectively illuminate all the message sends inside the loop and perform only the logic.

EDIT:

Drawing to a bitmap context without objc_messageSend ...

CGContextRef MyCreateBitmapContext (int pixelsWide, int pixelsHigh) { CGContextRef context = NULL; CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace; void * bitmapData; int bitmapByteCount; int bitmapBytesPerRow; bitmapBytesPerRow = (pixelsWide * 4);// 1 bitmapByteCount = (bitmapBytesPerRow * pixelsHigh); colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateWithName(kCGColorSpaceGenericRGB);// 2 bitmapData = calloc( bitmapByteCount );// 3 if (bitmapData == NULL) { fprintf (stderr, "Memory not allocated!"); return NULL; } context = CGBitmapContextCreate (bitmapData,// 4 pixelsWide, pixelsHigh, 8, // bits per component bitmapBytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast); if (context== NULL) { free (bitmapData);// 5 fprintf (stderr, "Context not created!"); return NULL; } CGColorSpaceRelease( colorSpace );// 6 return context;// 7 } void DrawMyStuff() { CGRect myBoundingBox;// 1 myBoundingBox = CGRectMake (0, 0, myWidth, myHeight);// 2 myBitmapContext = MyCreateBitmapContext (400, 300);// 3 // ********** Your drawing code here ********** // 4 CGContextSetRGBFillColor (myBitmapContext, 1, 0, 0, 1); CGContextFillRect (myBitmapContext, CGRectMake (0, 0, 200, 100 )); CGContextSetRGBFillColor (myBitmapContext, 0, 0, 1, .5); CGContextFillRect (myBitmapContext, CGRectMake (0, 0, 100, 200 )); myImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage (myBitmapContext);// 5 CGContextDrawImage(myContext, myBoundingBox, myImage);// 6 char *bitmapData = CGBitmapContextGetData(myBitmapContext); // 7 CGContextRelease (myBitmapContext);// 8 if (bitmapData) free(bitmapData); // 9 CGImageRelease(myImage); } 

explanation of what it's all doing in the Quartz2D guide