Doom's magic function

This is just my first post.

Why?

Every personal site needs a first post, no?

Nothing interesting?

Ok, ok... Here is a magnificent peice of code I like:

float Q_rsqrt( float number )
{
	long i;
	float x2, y;
	const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

	x2 = number * 0.5F;
	y  = number;
	i  = * ( long * ) &y;                       // evil floating point bit level hacking
	i  = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );               // what the fuck?
	y  = * ( float * ) &i;
	y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) );   // 1st iteration
//	y  = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) );   // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

	return y;
}

At the time, floating-point division was generally expensive compared to multiplication; the fast inverse square root algorithm bypassed the division step, giving it its performance advantage. Quake III Arena, a first-person shooter video game, used the fast inverse square root algorithm to accelerate graphics computation...

Source: Wikipedia