What is the cost of a function call?

Question

Compared to

• Simple memory access
• Disk access
• Memory access on another computer(on the same network)
• Disk access on another computer

Answer 1

Only memory access is faster than a function call.

But the call can be avoided if compiler with inline optimization (for GCC compiler(s) and not only it is activated when using level 3 of optimization (-O3) ).