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Subject: Re: 64-bit processors

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 15:49:06 01/16/01

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On January 15, 2001 at 23:29:42, Larry Griffiths wrote:

>On January 15, 2001 at 20:15:17, Ralf Elvsén wrote:
>
>>I looked ay the instruction set for the Itanium processor.
>>As far as I could see there was no instruction to get the first/last
>>bit set.
>>
>>Can someone with insight in processor design describe the
>>considerations done by the designers when they decide to
>>include or to not include such an instruction? (Assuming they
>>are not chess programmers :)
>>
>>Is it possible to quantify how the "trouble" to include
>>it scales with the number of bits? I.e. is it even less likely
>>to be found in an 128-bit processor?
>>
>>Ralf
>
>I asked this question a while back.
>
>I think IA32 instructions might still be supported and maybe the BSF BSR
>instructions are still available.
>
>Maybe you can verify this.
>
>Larry.


I actually think that they are not supported if I recall Eugene's comments
correctly.  It is possible to find which byte is non-zero in a 64 bit word,
but I think it then requires a 256-entry table look-up to find the set bit.



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