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Subject: Re: C vs asm vs look-up optimization question

Author: Tim Foden

Date: 06:41:44 01/23/02

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On January 22, 2002 at 23:00:33, Ricardo Gibert wrote:

>On January 22, 2002 at 21:54:59, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>
>>On January 22, 2002 at 21:21:57, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>>
>>>On January 22, 2002 at 21:15:17, Ricardo Gibert wrote:
>>>
>>>>On January 21, 2002 at 16:16:10, Rafael Andrist wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>Well, I just rewrote the following function in assembler to get better speed (no
>>>>>conditional jumps, less memory access) but the speedup was only minimal. A
>>>>>possible problem of the asm code is, that the instructions doesn't pair well,
>>>>>but it should be still considerably faster. Has anyone an idea what the problem
>>>>>with the code below is? Should I perhaps throw this function out and use a
>>>>>look-up-table?
>>>>>
>>>>>INLINE int Diag045Rot(const int iSqNr)
>>>>>{
>>>>>#if defined (Use_Asm)
>>>>>// 0 <= iSqNr <= 63
>>>>>__asm
>>>>>{
>>>>>  mov eax, iFeldNr;
>>>>>  mov ah, al;
>>>>>  and al, 007h;	//x (iFeldNr%8) --> al
>>>>>  shr ah, 3;	//y (iFeldNr/8) --> ah
>>>>>  sub al, ah;	//x-y --> al
>>>>>  mov ah, al;	//    --> ah
>>>>>  and ah, 080h;	//ah &= 0x80 (isolate sign bit)
>>>>>  add ah, 080h;	//ah += 0x80 (setting the carry bit)
>>>>>  adc ah, 0;	//ah += carry bit
>>>>>  shl ah, 3;	//ah <<= 3;
>>>>>  add al, ah;	//al += 8*(x-y < 0)
>>>>>  xor ah, ah;
>>>>>}
>>>>>#else
>>>>>  int x, y;
>>>>>  x = iSqNr%8;
>>>>>  y = iSqNr/8;
>>>>>  return x-y + 8*(x-y < 0);
>>>>
>>>>Isn't this is the same as "return abs(x-y);"? If so, maybe the compiler will do
>>>>a better job of optimizing with it.
>>>
>>>Oops! No it's not, but how about return (x-y+8)%8 ?
>>
>>Come to think of it, even better is "return (iSqNr-iSqNr/8)%8". I decided to
>>test this and it works fine. You'll have to benchmark it to see if it produces
>>faster code.
>
>Yes, this works, but I started to think about my suggestion of "return
>(x-y+8)%8;" and suspected it would not work and it doesn't, since x may be less
>than y of course.

You could just use "return (x - y) & 7;" instead.  :)

Which makes the possible assembly code into:

__asm
{
	mov	eax, square
	mov	ebx, square
	and	eax, 0x07	// eax = x
	shr	ebx, 3		// ebx = y
	sub	eax, ebx	// eax = x - y
	and	eax, 7		// ecx = (x - y) & 7
}

Cheers, Tim.

>"return (iSqNr-iSqNr/8)%8" doesn't have this problem, so it
>works like a charm. Only 3 operations rather than 6 in your original. BTW,
>"x-y<0" counts as only 1 in yours, since x-y<0 is the same as x<y.
>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>Also, if you are using msvc6, it might help the compiler to insert an
>>>>"__assume((0 <= iSqNr) && (iSqNr <= 63));". I don't use msvc6 myself, so I can't
>>>>tell you if this really helps here.
>>>>
>>>>>#endif
>>>>>}
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Thanks in Advance
>>>>>Rafael B. Andrist



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